The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 10)

(Continued from Part 9, previous blog post)

Nevertheless, besides Quebec politics there were at least two factors influencing Quebec premier Robert Bourassa not to accept Senate reform as in the July 7 Pearson accord.

One factor was the lack of a nationwide consensus on Senate equality, coupled with the interest of some (particularly Mulroney as earlier described) to abandon the Pearson accord and return to an unequal Senate model; In July, Mercredi had been given such persuasion by Liberal leader Jean Chretien: ⁴⁷²

“Mercredi met yesterday with Liberal leader Jean Chretien and constitution critic Andre Ouellet. The two federal politicians assured him that Quebec’s key concerns with the package centre on the proposal for an equal Senate, not aboriginal rights.”

Chretien sounded as if he had represented Quebec, but it was merely his view that Quebec’s key concerns with the Pearson accord were about equal Senate and not aboriginal rights. A few days later premier Bourassa’s aide Sylvie Godin stated that “major obstacles” Bourassa would like to address in the final negotiation included the equal Senate proposal, native self-government, and federal-provincial division of powers. ⁴⁷³

Bourassa and French Quebecers had concerns about “territorial integrity” when it came to native self-government. ⁴⁷⁴

Another factor for Quebec not to accept the Senate reform in the Pearson accord was that without Bourassa at the negotiation table the accord had given Quebec less compensation than given Ontario for the loss of Senate seats from 24 to 8: 10 additional Commons seats for Ontario’s loss of 16 Senate seats, and 3 for Quebec’s same loss – adjustments according to “the principle of representation by population”. ⁴⁷⁵

With Ontario’s 99 Commons seats versus Quebec’s 75, their respective 10-seat and 3-seat compensations were clearly out of proportion when compared to later New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna’s proposal of no-net-loss, full compensations.

When the final negotiation began on August 18, Bourassa revealed that he would indeed accept an equal Senate – despite his prior denials – but outlined conditions that amounted to limits on Triple-E – if Quebec senators were elected by Quebec National Assembly and if Senate powers were limited: ⁴⁷⁶

“Bourassa even suggested he could live with an equal, elected Senate — something he’s so far firmly resisted – as long as Quebec’s senators were elected by the National Assembly, rather than by the people, and as long as the new Senate’s powers were limited.

But Bourassa wouldn’t say yes or no to anything specific — an attitude other provincial officials found both frustrating and encouraging.”

Bourassa was unwilling to say “no” to Triple-E for fear that Alberta premier Don Getty might walk out of the negotiation. ⁴⁷⁷ His not being specific about limited Senate powers thus left it to others to suggest the “concrete terms” both he and the Triple-E supporters could accept.

Given that he now could accept Senate equality which he had publicly rejected (saying instead the Senate should be regionally equal), there should be likelihood that Bourassa would be open to at least some Senate veto power in general – when he had similarly said the Senate should only delay bills.

Bourassa elaborated further on his principles, that it was a matter of “the real power and authority conferred on the whole of the federal institutions”, and of examining “the different sharing out of powers and authority” to see “just what is to be the authority of the Senate”; he also emphasized the notion of “linguistic duality”: ⁴⁷⁸

“The problem of linguistic duality is there. It is linked to the authority and power of the Senate. What authority will we have in the new Senate? What will be the guarantees for Quebec as to the veto, language and cultural rights?”

As mentioned in an earlier part of this blog article, an argument advancing a more powerful notion of English-French duality had been put forward by Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government in 1982 in an attempt to block the Trudeau government’s repatriation of the Constitution, but that argument was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada.

It would appear that the problem this time was less of “linguistic duality” but political opposition to Senate-veto power from Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois, which did not want the Senate as a powerful central institution at the expense of Quebec. ⁴⁷⁹

This time the Pearson accord guaranteed Francophone senators absolute veto power over legislations materially affecting the French language and culture – anywhere in Canada; that should be adequate for protecting the official French language as recognized in the 1982 Constitution and the French culture in English Canada where the French communities were of a minority status, namely in all provinces and territories outside Quebec (except New Brunswick where English and French were recognized as equal) as per the 1982 Constitution; ⁴⁸⁰ within Quebec, the French identity would not only be protected but actively promoted as part of the “distinct society” designation.

Carlton University political science professor Robert Jackson commented that in the reformed Senate it would take only three Parti Quebecois (or Bloc Quebecois) senators out of likely six Francophone senators to exercise this veto power. ⁴⁸¹

With such padded constitutional protections for the French, the notion of linguistic duality ought to be based on the fact that English Canada comprised 8 (+ 1/2) provinces whereas French Canada comprised only one (+ 1/2) province.

Quebec certainly had a much larger presence in the Commons than would be of in an equal Senate, but to divert most matters not covered by the special Francophone veto, for that reason alone, to Senate-Commons joint sittings clearly risked negative reactions from English Canada – perhaps another reason Bourassa wasn’t suggesting the concretes of Senate-authority dilution.

As previously mentioned, the generous veto power to protect French language and culture had originated from an idea of Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells’s, intended for Quebec, during his opposition to the Meech Lake accord in 1990. It so happened that on one of the other “major obstacles” Bourassa wanted to address, namely aboriginal self-government rights being unspecific as in the Pearson accord, Wells – the proponent of a ‘pure’ Triple-E Senate – also had strong concerns, and among the nine premiers endorsing the Pearson accord had been the only one voicing objection: ⁴⁸²

“Wells told reporters that he can not support the inherent right to self-government without a clear definition.”

Thus, on the first day of the final negotiation Bourassa found himself opposite Wells on one major obstacle but allied on another (the latter “a strange de facto alliance” as noted by some): ⁴⁸³

“But it [Pearson accord] goes much further, proposing an elected, powerful Senate with equal representation from each province and offering Canada’s aboriginal peoples an undefined, inherent right to self-government — two things Quebec has problems with.

The aboriginal package still held Tuesday, although Quebec and Newfoundland expressed strong concerns.”

That would have put Wells in a position to craft compromises with Bourassa, helping Bourassa make aboriginal self-government rights more specific in exchange for Bourassa letting him keep some Senate veto power.

But if he had had such a plan, by the time final negotiation began on August 18 Wells had already abandoned it. According to an August 16 press report, Wells had indicated to other premiers on July 3 – days before the Pearson accord was reached to include a 70% Senate absolute veto on ordinary legislation – that he would accept joint sitting as the deadlock resolution between the Senate and the Commons, and would agree to give Quebec a veto on future constitutional changes to the Senate, Commons and the Supreme Court if the reformed Senate was acceptable to Newfoundland; at that crucial earlier time Wells was already willing to sacrifice Senate power in his fight against unequal senate models and Romanow’s model of equal Senate with unequal voting. ⁴⁸⁴

As previously mentioned, after Wells’s departure from the meeting on July 3 (to fly home to Newfoundland) a tentative deal was struck for an equal senate with a 75% absolute veto – without the “joint sitting” mechanism, not until Don Getty brought it in on July 7 for the 60%-veto level.

It’s hard to believe that Clyde Wells, the strong proponent of Triple-E Senate who then publicly called the Pearson accord’s Senate “not a true Triple-E”, but only “a good first start”, had quietly agreed to let others pull in another direction toward no effective Senate power in the Charlottetown accord.

After Bourassa’s rejection of the Pearson accord in July, wheeling and dealing led by New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna and Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow along the line of McKenna’s no-net-loss model, that would also eliminate Senate-veto power on ordinary legislation, began rolling at full speed through July and early August, in order to present Bourassa with such a deal he would accept at the negotiation table, i.e, even if Bourassa didn’t specify what limitations he needed on Senate powers.

To gain wider acceptance for this kind of equal Senate – one with little real authority – McKenna made various accommodations to other provinces. Press reported that in the weeks leading up to the final negotiation, McKenna and his officials drafted various proposals, consulted other provincial officials by faxes and telephone, and capped the work with an extended session with Romanow the night before August 18. ⁴⁸⁵

The idea of additional Commons seats to compensate for loss of Senate seats had come from Ontario premier Bob Rae, whose province and Quebec otherwise stood to lose many parliamentary seats. ⁴⁸⁶

Alberta premier Don Getty’s initial reaction to the McKenna model was that it would be a hard sell for Alberta, Manitoba and Newfoundland, but he did not reject it outright as he did with Prince Edward Island premier Joe Ghiz’s unequal Senate proposal (previously discussed). ⁴⁸⁷

McKenna then proposed dropping the Pearson accord’s requirement of “proportional representation” for Senate election, instead allowing the provinces to choose their own method of electing the senators. ⁴⁸⁸ That obviously would permit Quebec to elect senators through its legislature.

A press story indicated that Getty was so opposed to proportional representation (as was Nova Scotia premier Don Cameron, both Tories) he was willing to see it dropped and in exchange not to oppose elimination of the 70% Senate absolute veto and full reliance on joint sitting for veto-resolution of ordinary legislation. ⁴⁸⁹

Before the formal negotiation began on August 18, the McKenna model had further evolved into the Modified McKenna model – proposed by Romanow and his justice minister Robert Mitchell – with an additional guarantee of 25% of Commons seats for Quebec no matter how small its relative population size would decline (Quebec’s population had been declining and was expected to continue to decline). ⁴⁹⁰

Like the McKenna model, the Modified McKenna model proposed Senate-Commons joint sitting as the sole Senate-veto resolution for ordinary legislation, the main difference being that McKenna’s would trigger a joint sitting at the level of a 2/3 veto while Romanow lowered it to 60%. ⁴⁹¹

Recall that during the negotiation in June, prior to the Pearson accord, Romanow and McKenna had been keen on the Romanow model of equal Senate with unequal votes, but it was flatly rejected by Clyde Wells who called it “demeaning and insulting”; Boruassa reportedly had interest in that earlier model. ⁴⁹²

As the final negotiation began, other Senate reform proposals still competing with McKenna and Romanow were: Joe Ghiz’s unequal Senate plan that was close to Mulroney’s liking but rejected by Don Getty, Joe Clark’s proposal of interim adjustment of the current Senate with a few Senate seats, and several variations of equal Senate – barely reported by the media – including one from Getty based on McKenna’s; also, some premiers continued to hold the suspicion that Mulroney wanted the negotiation to fail so he could bring in his own unilateral plan. ⁴⁹³

But acceptance of Romanow’s Modified McKenna model (or no Senate deal) was likely a foregone conclusion – with only the details of “no-net-loss” compensations to be worked out and the guarantee of 25% Commons seats to Quebec to be agreed on.

According to some press reports’ stories of the negotiation meeting, Bourassa sat silently listening as a number of other Senate models were presented, then after Romanow presented the Modified McKenna model, Bob Rae turned to Bourassa and said that major concessions had been made to Quebec, at this point Mulroney called for the meeting to adjoin, but to others’ surprise Bourassa started to speak, stating he would like the guarantee to be 25% of all parliamentary seats. ⁴⁹⁴

Thus Bourassa began his formal negotiation of Senate reform by bargaining over Romanow’s proposed guarantee of seats in the Modified McKenna model.

In the end Bourassa did not get the more seats he asked for, but details of the math calculated by Manitoba premier Gary Filmon showed that after receiving the McKenna model’s no-net-loss compensation Quebec would have 25% of the MPs – the same as to be guaranteed permanently: ⁴⁹⁵

“In fact, one key figure in doing the calculation (“maybe because he’s an engineer,” observed one participant) was Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon, who worked out the details of taking 42 senators away from the larger provinces and adding 42 MPs in the House. Quebec now has 24.8 per cent of the parliamentarians and Mr. Filmon worked out that, with six senators each, Quebec would have 25 per cent of the MPs, and 24.8 per cent of Parliament in joint sittings.”

Even a strong Triple-E supporter like Manitoba’s Filmon became spellbound with joint sittings – at the expense of the Senate as an independent parliamentary institution.

Immediately after agreeing to the deal, Bourassa was happy to publicly highlight the fact that “joint sitting” meant less Senate power: ⁴⁹⁶

“”Most of the legislation, if it is stopped by the Senate, will go back to a joint session (of the Senate and Commons). In that joint session, Quebec will have 25 per cent of the political weight,” Mr. Bourassa said. “Of course, we could talk about an equal Senate, but when it is applied, we have to take account how it is applied.””

Many in western Canada felt the deal was a sell-out of the Triple-E Senate cause and, as phrased by then Reform party chief policy adviser Stephen Harper, viewed the 25% guarantee of Quebec’s share of Commons seats as “a giveaway” to Quebec for nothing or very little: ⁴⁹⁷

“”Would the 25 per cent (of Commons seats for Quebec) have sold if there was a genuine Triple-E (elected, equal and effective) senate? That’s an interesting question,” says Stephen Harper, the Reform party’s chief policy adviser. “I think most people don’t perceive the Senate as a big gain so they perceive the 25 per cent (of Commons seats for Quebec) as a giveaway for nothing or for very little.””

Even more disappointing was Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, the former ‘pure’ Triple-E proponent; he was among the first (as was Ontario’s Bob Rae) to endorse Romanow’s guarantee of 25% Commons seats for Quebec, apparently without arguing for Senate veto power, proposing only to further lower the joint-sitting threshold from 60% to 50%. ⁴⁹⁸

Giving up Senate effective powers just for an equal Senate was all but ‘fait accompli’.

The famous Diane Wilhelmy tape – as in the Wilhelmy affair discussed in an earlier part of this blog article for its mention of David Cameron (i.e., husband of author Stevie Cameron who has relentlessly exposed corruptions in the Mulroney era) – also confirmed Bourassa’s listening more than talking, his having help from Mulroney and Rae, and even his ‘teaming up’ with Clyde Wells, during this final negotiation: ⁴⁹⁹

“He always works by thinking that Brian will do it, by thinking that Bob Rae will do it. He teams up with Wells. And he doesn’t talk, you understand? He wants to settle it bilaterally, or he passes off questions to the lawyers and thinks that they’ll do the clean-up work so that he can keep his mouth shut.”

The revelation by Andre Tremblay, Bourassa’s constitutional adviser, that Bourassa could count on Brian Mulroney or Ontario’s Bob Rae to do something, was not exactly a surprise; but Bourassa teaming up with Clyde Wells without the latter asking to preserve some effective Senate powers was somewhat unexpected.

For his shared concerns with Bourassa, Wells tried to make the native self-government right more concrete, to specify what it would not include, but his approach was shot down by Romanow: ⁵⁰⁰

“Mr. Wells was pushing for “negative lists” – that would spell out what aboriginal self-government did not apply to. But Mr. Romanow, a lawyer, said that a negative list wouldn’t solve the problem because it would imply that everything else was up for grabs.”

In the end, the concerns of Bourassa and Wells with regard to native self-government were addressed through mediation by Bob Rae, with Mulroney looking over his shoulder, between Bourassa and aboriginal leader Ovide Mercredi, leading to the Charlottetown accord provisions that the native self-government right “should not create new Aboriginal rights to land”, and that the courts when intervening should first focus on effecting “a negotiated resolution”; in any case Bourassa won it through Rae, whom and Romanow were the only premiers trusted by the natives according to Mercredi. ⁵⁰¹

In addition to the guarantee of aboriginal Senate seats as in the Pearson accord, the Charlottetown accord tentatively proposed the mechanism of special veto by aboriginal senators on “certain matters materially affecting Aboriginal people”, ⁵⁰² i.e., in the Francophone-veto style originated from Wells’s idea for Quebec, agreed on during the June negotiation as previously mentioned.

It seemed that Wells’s rival premiers not only gave away Senate effectiveness – to Bourassa’s preference – but gained native leaders’ trust as well.

While publicly acknowledging he had disagreements, Wells not only endorsed the Charlottetown accord’s Senate reform in but also praised Mulroney – his “long-time and bitter adversary on constitutional matters” – for reaching the accord, and even volunteered his help to solicit others’ support for it. ⁵⁰³

The unexpected emergence of a conciliatory and compromising Clyde Wells – in stark contrast to his past fierce stand against the Meech Lake accord (and his firm Triple-E stands in public prior to this time) – prompted Montreal Gazette columnist Don Macpherson to speculate, or rather mock, that this Clyde Wells was an “imposter”: ⁵⁰⁴

“Even the premier of Newfoundland was being flexible, leading one to wonder who the imposter was and what he had done with the Clyde Wells from the Meech Lake round of constitutional talks.

Imposter or not, Wells accepted an imperfect Triple-E Senate and even teamed up with Bourassa to get limitations placed on the right of aboriginal self-government. How many Quebecers, who have generally regarded Wells since the Meech round with the same visceral hatred that English Canadians reserve for Brian Mulroney, ever expected to see Wells as an ally?”

If the native leaders’ concessions on self-government could not be exchanged for Bourassa’s agreement to keep some Senate authority, what then happened to the third of the “major obstacles” which Bourassa’s aide Sylvie Godin had said Bourassa would like to address in the final negotiation, namely division of powers between the federal government and the Quebec government?

Bourassa’s demands for more Quebec powers were flatly rejected by prime minister Mulroney.

Division of powers was a much more important issue to Quebecers than Senate reform; the Jean Allaire report endorsed by Bourassa’s Quebec Liberal party in March 1991 had a list of 22 areas in which Quebec would like to have exclusive powers (jurisdictions) to be agreed to by the federal government. ⁵⁰⁵

The day after a tentative final deal was reached on Senate reform, Jean Allaire, author of the Allaire report, was quoted as saying that more Quebec powers was the principal demand of Bourassa’s Liberal party, although loss in the Senate would be a political issue for Bourassa: ⁵⁰⁶

“”Quebecers have never lost sleep over the Senate,” said Jean Allaire, whose report calling for Quebec control of 22 exclusive areas of jurisdiction became the party platform for Bourassa’s Liberals.

“Senate reform has never been the principal demand of the Liberal party. The principal demand is the division of powers,” Allaire said in an interview.

Bourassa may have difficulty selling a deal “if at some point Quebec would lose something in the Senate,” he said.”

Later on that day, Bourassa’s demand for more Quebec provincial powers was rejected by Mulroney and the other premiers: with only minor adjustments, the Pearson accord’s agreement on division of powers was adopted, and some provinces also told Bourassa that they had gone as far as or even beyond they could in reaching the July 7 agreement on division of powers. ⁵⁰⁷

Mulroney made a point of declaring that his government would never cede that many powers to Quebec: ⁵⁰⁸

“Mulroney frankly told Bourassa his proposals were “not in the realm of reality,” Mulroney’s chief of staff later told reporters.

“The Prime Minister indicated the traditional role of the federal government was not about to be vacated by this federal government,” Hugh Segal added.

Mulroney also reportedly told Bourassa the Quebec premier’s wish list was longer than that of the separatist Parti Quebecois in 1985.”

Despite Mulroney’s rhetoric, a reading of the Jean Allaire report and the Quebec Liberal party convention’s amending resolution – the latter contained clarifications on which of the 22 areas of powers Quebec wanted were already under Quebec control – would reveal that Bourassa had gained little new: Quebec already had full control in all but one of the areas declared in the Pearson accord (and in the Charlottetown accord) as to be in exclusive provincial jurisdiction, including municipal affairs, culture, tourism, labour market development and training (i.e., manpower and training), and forestry and mining (part of natural resources); the one exception was regional development, which was not in Quebec control and for which the federal government was willing to make an arrangement with a province if requested. ^{509, 510}

A little more thought over Quebec’s list of powers has led me to believe that in some other areas of powers not in full control by Quebec at the time, the jurisdiction indeed could be transferred to the provincial level.

One such area was communications (apart from the area of telecommunications), i.e., media communications that delivered cultural contents; the following passage from the Charlottetown accord as applied to culture, after appropriate changes could probably apply to communications: ⁵¹¹

“Provinces should have exclusive jurisdiction over cultural matters within the provinces. This should be recognized through an explicit constitutional amendment that also recognizes the continuing responsibility of the federal government in Canadian cultural matters. The federal government should retain responsibility for national cultural institutions, including grants and contributions delivered by these institutions. The Government of Canada commits to negotiate cultural agreements with provinces in recognition of their lead responsibility for cultural matters within the province and to ensure that the federal government and the province work in harmony.”

A key distinction to make in the area of communications would be the different policies and regulations, provincial versus national, communication organizations needed to follow; e.g., local TV contents, operations and ownership – barring the aspects of telecommunications – would all be within provincial jurisdiction.

Another area Quebec could be given control was agriculture, even though it was a field traditionally dependent on federal control, such as the dependence in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta (and part of British Columbia) on the “monopoly” of the Canadian wheat board; the approach taken by the Charlottetown accord for the area of regional development, namely a separate agreement with a province at its request, could similarly provide the flexibility to let Quebec manage its agriculture development while retaining existent federal authority in other provinces. ⁵¹²

Bourassa reportedly received a promise of future negotiations on power transfers to provinces that could be written into the Constitution later – they would be about further decentralization while maintaining provincial equality and not about ceding special powers to Quebec and entrenching them in the Constitution. ⁵¹³

Overall, what he managed to do with each of the three “major obstacles”, i.e., accomplishing little in getting more provincial powers, agreeing to an equal Senate with its real authority taken away, and making native self-government rights more specific, when compared to their relative importance to Quebec served as further confirmation that Bourassa was led by Mulroney and others onto a path that – for the political interests of others and for Bourassa’s appeasement of Quebec sovereignty sentiments – sabotaged Senate effectiveness as a goal of Canadian Senate reform yet failed in terms of his federalist party’s fundamental objective of Quebec autonomy.

Belanger-Campeau commissioner Claude Beland clearly felt this way, who had participated in work on the commission’s report on sovereignty, released in March 1991 as previously mentioned, and who was president of Quebec’s co-operative movement and credit-union network: ⁵¹⁴

“Claude Beland, president of Quebec’s co-operative movement and credit-union network, said that Quebec had been dragged onto English Canada’s negotiating turf.

Even federalist business leaders who testified before the Belanger-Campeau commission didn’t consider asking for a guarantee of 25 per cent of Commons seats as promised in the latest proposals. They wanted more provincial powers and an end to federal interference in Quebec’s jurisdictions, he said.”

As Claude Beland pointed out, Quebec didn’t ask for guaranteed percentage of Commons seats but wanted more provincial powers; yet Mulroney, McKenna and Romanow gave Bourassa a proposal of Senate with no effective Senate power, with an attractive additional guarantee on Commons seats to entice him to negotiate and agree, but otherwise would not give him at least some of what he really wanted – more provincial powers for Quebec.

Press reports indicated that Alberta premier Don Getty was probably the only premier who hesitated about elimination of the reformed Senate’s 70% absolute veto on ordinary legislation, loathing to accept proposals that would “soften a Triple-E Senate”; but Getty was ambiguous on what type of Senate model would be effective enough to make it Triple-E or on its relation to “the fundamentals of equality”. ⁵¹⁵

One thing was clear though, that Getty was asked by his advisors to consider boycotting the negotiation at a time when the Modified McKenna model was the centre of attention; they reported told him: ⁵¹⁶

“Get out of there. Don’t get into that kind of chasing.”

Getty was ambivalent about their advice and did not walk out, mentioning it only to show his displeasure with more erosion of Triple-E Senate (or more erosion on “the fundamentals of equality”).

Note that Getty had been the one bringing “joint sitting” into the Pearson accord in the first place, although he had proposed it for a veto level that otherwise would not be given power (i.e., when other mechanisms such as that of a ‘mediation committee’ were either not considered or not viewed as viable).

All aboard this proposal of Senate without real effective powers, except B.C. premier Mike Harcourt who had a new grievance and wanted to further the negotiation on Senate, but Harcourt’s problem was not with the Senate itself but with how new Commons seats were assigned in the McKenna no-net-loss model.

It turned out that the principle of no-net-loss was only for Quebec; for others the principle of representation by population was followed: after Quebec received 18 Commons seats as compensation for loss of Senate seats (from 24 to 6), Ontario also received 18 additional Commons seats but only because Ontario had been under-represented in the Commons; Nova Scotia and New Brunswick each would lose 4 Senate seats (from 10 to 6) and Prince Edward Island would get 2 more Senate seats (from 4 to 6), and that would convert to 6 more Commons seats which would instead be given to B.C., 4, and Alberta, 2, for their increased populations. ⁵¹⁷

After the Senate deal was done on August 20, Harcourt realized that B.C. was still badly under-represented in the Commons, so he publicly complained about it and said the Senate deal could not be completed. ⁵¹⁸

That of course was not re-negotiating the Senate part of the deal.

Harcourt’s misstep incurred criticisms in British Columbia; B.C. Tory senator Pat Carney, B.C. Liberal leader Gordon Wilson and Simon Fraser University political scientist Edward McWhinney all described Harcourt’s performance as “asleep at the switch”; Harcourt was also criticized for agreeing to the guarantee of 25% Commons seats for Quebec. ⁵¹⁹

Senator Pat Carney even declared that Harcourt must change the agreement at any cost; it’s not clear if Harcourt heeded her call, but he later did get a promise that B.C. would receive more consideration in a future Commons-seat adjustment – to be speeded up to the mid-1990s. ⁵²⁰

As previously discussed, Harcourt had been a supporter of the NDP view of Senate abolishment, then advocated regional equality with B.C. as a region, before becoming a late convert of Triple-E Senate. Accused of selling out, Don Getty in neighbouring Alberta incurred much worse criticisms, with Reform party chief policy adviser Stephen Harper calling the Senate deal a “political dead end” for the western premiers who agreed to it. ⁵²¹

University of Calgary historian David Bercuson called the reformed Senate a “PIE” instead of Triple-E, and future senators in it “a herd of cows”: ⁵²²

“It’s PIE with a cow in front of it: Partly elected, ineffective, and equal. And it will probably get as much done as a herd of cows in the afternoon.”

The “PIE” (or “PEI” to mean partly elected, equal and ineffective) marked the end of “Effectiveness” in the Canadian Triple-E Senate saga.

The “Pearson Accord” had received its name from the Lester B. Pearson building in Ottawa, where the July 7 deal had been reached under Joe Clark: the final negotiations under Brian Mulroney on August 18-22 were also held in the Pearson building. ⁵²³

The “Charlottetown Accord” and the final text of its “Consensus Report” became official during two days of meetings in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, August 27-28; prime minister Mulroney was the first to publicly refer to it by that name. ⁵²⁴

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

Or

(Go to Part 11, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 9)

(Continued from Part 8, previous blog post)

Another area in the Pearson accord with some controversy and was adopted by the Charlottetown accord was the social charter championed by Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae.

During the June 1992 constitutional negotiation when the “social charter” was merged with the “economic union” – dismantling of inter-provincial barriers to investment, trade and employment – into “social and economic union” in a proposed new section in the Constitution, columnist Don McGillivray complained that it was useless because it did not permit enforcement through the courts: ⁴⁰⁷

“By the end of the Joe Clark constitutional talks on June 11, the economic union idea had been merged with the “social charter” proposed by Ontario’s Bob Rae into something called “Canada’s social and economic union.”

This was supposed to have governments “working together to strengthen the Canadian economic union; the free movement of persons, goods services and capital; the goal of full employment.”

But the whole thing disappeared in a puff of green smoke with this little sentence: “The provision should not be justiciable.”

In other words, it would just be pretty constitutional phrases that couldn’t be enforced in the courts.”

But McGillivray missed several points in his complaint about the perceived futility of nonjusticiable “social and economic union”.

Firstly, the “social and economic union” section was laden with the language of “policy objectives”, i.e., principles for government policy and direct administration in this area – an approach preferred by the political left probably more than the political right; Bob Rae had called for an independent commission jointly appointed by the federal and provincial governments to monitor these matters, but the Pearson accord let the monitoring mechanism be determined by “a first ministers conference”. ⁴⁰⁸

Secondly, back in April when Rae was pleased with the negotiation’s ‘breakthrough’ on a social charter, the official announcement by constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark only referred to it as “the principles of a social and economic union in the new constitution”; ⁴⁰⁹ clearly, placing the social and the economic principles together had been the federal government’s intent and Rae accepted it.

And thirdly, from the start the federal New Democratic Party’s position on lobbying for a social charter, as outlined by party leader Audrey McLaughlin in early February 1992, gave up on it being a ‘charter of rights’ that would act as legal guidelines; at the time, Liberal deputy leader Sheila Copps already mocked that the Soviet Union had such a social charter and it had not worked: ⁴¹⁰

“”If that’s the case, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on,” she said. “We must remember that Moscow had a social charter and it didn’t work. If it’s not appealable to the courts, you wonder if it’s worth the constitutional turmoil.””

Apparently, Bob Rae had not garnered united support from the left to make a social charter court-enforceable.

Rae’s vision of a social charter had been that of “social rights”, e.g., the right to medicare, that would be written into the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but Joe Clark ruled out a court-enforceable charter on the ‘social rights’ and so NDP leader McLaughlin pushed to have them included as government principles instead, which in her view should include “full employment and fair working conditions, income security, universal health care, food, clothing, shelter, quality education; clean environment and a sustainable economy”; some of these objectives, such as the goal of full employment, were later transferred to under “economic union” when the social and economic union sections were merged. ⁴¹¹

But one then saw that in the course of the negotiations Joe Clark gradually allowed significant progress to be made over his reluctance, reservation, or initial opposition as the Mulroney government’s point man on constitutional reform – in areas such as official participation by aboriginal representatives and the Triple-E Senate; McLaughlin’s starting position meant the federal NDP wouldn’t bother to continue to exert pressure on the negotiations for justiciability of the social charter.

Bob Rae continued to push for some social benefits to be included in the current “mobility rights” section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ⁴¹² which could be enforced by the courts.

However another key difference existed between McLaughlin’s position and Rae’s: McLaughlin wanted either the reformed Senate or an independent commission to oversee government performance on social-charter matters, whereas Rae proposed only an independent commission (possibly because McLaughlin had advocated Senate abolishment anyway and Ontario did not want a strong Senate). ⁴¹³

This difference on Senate involvement or not somehow may have had to do with dropping of the ball by Rae at the constitutional negotiation table in June.

Press archives indicate that Rae continued past mid-May calling for the “social charter” principles, for monitoring by a commission, and for the improved “mobility rights”. ⁴¹⁴ Then, there would be no more mention of improving “mobility rights” after the June negotiation, prior to which Rae had direct telephone consultations with Mulroney, Bourassa and other premiers as previously mentioned.

It was likely during the June negotiation when Bob Rae lost out on his effort to include some social benefits in the “mobility rights”, but this was also a critical period of negotiation when Senate power was being extensively studied; obviously Rae didn’t push for the reformed Senate to give special attention to the social-charter matters, whereas Alberta during this time made inroad on special Senate veto power over taxation related to natural resources, and diverted monitoring of “social and economic union” to the first ministers’ domain, where entrenching the first ministers conference in the Constitution was quickly agreed on. ⁴¹⁵

The lack of court enforceability for “social and economic union” in the July 7 Pearson accord was likely carefully watched by some: on July 9 the Supreme Court of Canada handed down a unanimous ruling on a precedent-setting case of ordering the government to give benefits to people excluded from existing social programs in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ⁴¹⁶

As for the lack of a defined role by the reformed Senate to oversee “social and economic union”, recall that in a constitutional policy conference in early 1992 many participants had expressed the desire for the reformed Senate to become “a forum for Canadians who feel left out of the political process – women, aboriginal peoples, linguistic and ethnic minorities, labor groups and the poor”; ⁴¹⁷ now there would be aboriginal Senate seats and Francophone Senate seats, with some special veto powers (originated from the idea of Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells dating back to the Meech Lake accord days, as previously discussed), but otherwise no special Senate power on other social matters – in the Pearson accord or later the Charlottetown accord.

Because “Social and economic union” covered national and interprovincial standardization of social and economic policy matters, province-wide elected federal senators could be well suited for its oversight; instead, the governments that already managed the policies and their implementation would also determine the monitoring mechanism in the future.

In spite of its shortcomings, the Pearson accord was an important milestone in the Canadian constitutional saga: as the first constitutional agreement – since the failed Meech Lake accord – between the federal government and all provinces except Quebec, all territories and official aboriginal representatives, it greatly surpassed the Meech Lake accord and opened new horizons; it would significantly extend the 1982 Constitution – which did not have Quebec’s consent either – albeit somewhat unconventionally in its enshrinement of specific rights for specific ethnic/cultural minorities; most importantly, the Pearson accord was only a blueprint to be revised and refined by an expected first ministers conference to reach a final accord.

But prime minister Brian Mulroney was not that happy that an accord was reached with him away at the G-7 summit in Munich, Germany, although it was not unexpected to him that the premiers were – in his words – going “to effect a compromise situation”; he was described as “taken aback”, especially that the accord included a Triple-E Senate (really a 2.5-E Senate as previously discussed) when he had made clear that it would not be his choice, be it Equal or Effective (as in real Senate power); according to a press story, former Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke had convinced Mulroney that a powerful Senate could paralyze the House of Commons. ⁴¹⁸

Joe Clark who personally liked a Triple-E Senate deserved credit for adjusting his official position at the negotiation table to let the Triple-E supporters win a “Triple-E compromise” – elected and equal with partial veto power – over the federal government’s reservations as persistently conveyed by Mulroney; Bob Rae’s willingness to convert to Triple-E and Clyde Wells’s strong stand on ‘pure’ Triple-E were also instrumental. ⁴¹⁹

Immediately, Clark became a target of Mulroney’s side, with the first salvo fired by defence minister Marcel Masse at the cabinet table, who stated a Triple-E Senate would not be accepted in Quebec and must be changed to one with regional equality. ⁴²⁰

Masse was not only a senior cabinet minister from Quebec but (as previously discussed) someone who later at Mulroney’s request introduced Kim Campbell to Mulroney’s Quebec supporters and brought Mulroney’s old leadership campaign team to Campbell’s side; Campbell would also succeed Masse as defence minister prior to succeeding Mulroney as prime minister.

With Mulroney and many cabinet ministers keeping a distance to the Pearson accord, Clark had to personally defend the “Triple-E compromise” from criticisms by Masse, Quebec Tory Senator Claude Castonguay, Quebec Tory MPs Jean-Pierre Blackburn and Monique Tardif, and others, and from Mulroney’s open disagreement: ⁴²¹

““The idea of an equal (Senate) was critical to the agreement,” Clark told reporters. “So I assume that that is a fundamental principle.”

But Mulroney, asked if the equal Senate deal is negotiable, said: “Nothing is settled until everything is settled. And how could you suggest that everything is settled on a change as fundamental as (Senate reform) unless all the parties agree to it?””

Quebec polls also showed more Quebecers opposing than supporting Triple-E Senate, with many caught off-guard by Ontario premier Bob Rae’s sudden conversion to it with Quebec premier Robert Bourassa absent from the negotiation, and by Rae’s insistence that Bourassa accept an equal Senate; more than half of the Quebecers polled were willing to vote ‘yes’ in a sovereignty referendum. ⁴²²

Some ardent Quebec nationalists, such as political scientist Leon Dion (whose relation to Stephane Dion has been mentioned in earlier Notes), demanded a new Parliament with equal representation of Quebecers and Canadians. ⁴²³

Clark became defensive about the provincially equal Senate and its power, arguing that the 70% veto on ordinary legislation would not very likely happen, and that Bourassa had asked to wait until July and now was an opportunity for “politicians of good will” to overcome exasperation. ⁴²⁴

Despite the heated rhetoric, new conditions set on July 15 by Bourassa for rejoining constitutional negotiation did not include changes to the Triple-E Senate, focusing only on “clarifications on the distinct-society clause, the veto over the creation of new provinces, and the immigration deal”, related to the Meech Lake accord which had permitted Quebec to not only “preserve” but “promote” its distinct French identity; Bourassa even mentioned “the crucial importance of a Triple-E Senate as part of a national compromise”. ⁴²⁵

To demonstrate constructiveness on his part, Clark raised the prospect of guaranteeing Senate Francophone representation from outside Quebec, and of incorporating a requirement of a majority of Quebec senators to defeat any Commons bill. ⁴²⁶ The first would be sensible given that French as an official language was not confined to Quebec, whereas the second was related to Clyde Wells’s idea of special Senate veto for Quebec (on French language and culture) that was instead granted to Francophone senators, but as described by Clark would be too broad, unrestricted.

Association canadienne-francaise de l’Alberta, which represented French Canadians in Alberta, sent Robert Bourassa a proposal resembling Clark’s on adjusting the Senate in favor of Quebec: it suggests at least one Francophone senator for every province outside Quebec, a double-majority (Anglophone senators and Francophone senators) approval requirement on all matters of language and culture, and a similar requirement involving majority Quebec senators on matters pertaining to that province. ⁴²⁷

Tory MPs from western Canada rallied around Clark on the Triple-E Senate; in his typical openness, B.C. caucus chair Stan Wilbee called for a national caucus meeting to discuss the constitutional deal; some of them however were also concerned that the proposals on aboriginal rights and native-self government with specifics undefined were too vague and too sweeping. ⁴²⁸

Even Reform party leader Preston Manning called the Triple-E compromise “a major step toward real Senate reform”, even though it was less than what his party had hoped for. ⁴²⁹

Cooler heads just might prevail.

But Mulroney would rather take things in a different direction, i.e., use the opportunity of public split over the Pearson accord to return to an unequal and powerless Senate as in his earlier plan for unilateral action had the accord not been reached. ⁴³⁰

On that Mulroney no doubt felt encouraged when Liberal leader Jean Chretien publicly called for scrapping the Pearson accord and holding a fist ministers’ conference to negotiate on the basis of the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee report, which had rejected an equal Senate in favor of a regionally equal one, and recommended Senate power to delay but not kill legislations; but Chretien’s request was rejected by Clark who reaffirmed the Pearson accord as the basis for negotiation with Quebec. ⁴³¹

The next day, Clark told the media that Bourassa would likely go long with an equal Senate once he felt his conditions were met for Quebec to rejoin the negotiation, and Clark announced that Mulroney was close to inviting the premiers to an informal lunch meeting. ⁴³²

But on modifying Senate mechanism to favor Quebec, it was reported that while reiterating the prospect of guaranteeing Francophone seats from outside Quebec, Clark now mentioned – instead of special veto for Quebec senators as proposed days ago – extending Senate-Commons “joint sitting” to overrule Senate veto if the veto happened a second time after the Commons’ re-passing of the legislation – to favor the “superior numbers” of Commons seats held by Quebec and Ontario. ⁴³³

That was according to Julian Beltrame of The Ottawa Citizen. According to Susan Delacourt of The Globe and Mail, Clark mentioned either reintroduction of the bill by the Commons after a Senate veto, or for a 70% veto to end the bill a certain percentage of Quebec senators would be required (i.e., a special veto for Quebec senators was still on the table and “joint sitting” was not yet the only choice of veto resolution). ⁴³⁴

Delacourt also reported rumors that “whipped through” the financial communities in Toronto and New York, about Joe Clark discussing with Mulroney possible resignation from his constitutional affairs job if an agreement could not be reached; but Clark denied the rumors.

Was the inching closer of “joint sitting” as the only Senate-veto outcome on ordinary legislation demanded by Bourassa (who had been quoted as saying the Senate should be able to delay but not kill bills, and should be regionally equal rather than province-equal), ⁴³⁵ or was it the preference of Mulroney – like when “joint sitting” first got into the Pearson accord on July 7 courtesy of Alberta premier Don Getty as previously discussed?

Chuck Cook, Tory MP for North Vancouver, B.C., became openly critical of both Mulroney and Bourassa for what might be in the works between them, saying he was “scared to death”: ⁴³⁶

“”I’m scared to death of this,” Cook (PC-North Vancouver) said. “I fear what Mulroney and Bourassa will come out with. I fear it could blow the whole agreement apart.”

Ian Waddell (NDP-Port Moody-Coquitlam) warns of a “reverse Meech.”

“I think the sense of alienation in Western Canada would be similar to the alienation that came from Quebec” after the Meech Lake Accord’s death in June, 1990.”

Ironically Chuck Cook, who then openly campaigned against the Charlottetown accord in the national referendum in October, indeed soon died, one day before Mulroney announcing his resignation, but of lung cancer (as discussed in an earlier part of the Notes) rather than scare.

As previously also commented on, the political differences between Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark was an interesting theme that had emerged prior to, and reappeared on and off during, the Mulroney government era.

At the time of Mulroney’s 1983 Tory leadership bid to defeat and replace Clark who was viewed as on the political left, Tory strategist Dalton Camp publicly complained that Mulroney’s campaign was supported by “offshore money”, part of which turned out to be from German interests represented by businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, ⁴³⁷ that then continued through the Airbus Affair and to the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair – the business relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber highlighted by $300,000 Schreiber gave Mulroney from a Swiss bank account – that has been subject of a 2009 public inquiry conducted by Justice Jeffrey J. Oliphant and is one of the first issues analyzed in this blog article.

Dalton Camp was a lifelong Tory, former party president and former Mulroney cabinet adviser, but he was also a critic of the political rightwing and a supporter of Joe Clark; he was from New Brunswick and had advised former New Brunswick Tory premier Richard Hatfield whose party later lost every seat to Frank McKenna’s Liberals in 1987 (as mentioned in an earlier part of the Notes); ⁴³⁸ Camp perceptively remarked of Hatfield’s conservative style of politics when the latter passed away from brain cancer in late April 1991 – coincidentally only several days after Clark had taken over federal responsibility on constitutional issues from Mulroney himself: ⁴³⁹

“Unlike his contemporaries, he had no use for public opinion polls, believing he could find out all he needed to know by walking through the market on Saturdays.”

Prior to July 1992, the last time rumors flied about a Mulroney-Clark dispute and possible Clark resignation, in January, Camp wrote an article, “Mulroney’s myth of indispensability”, to comment on Mulroney’s style of finishing work Joe Clark had supposedly been “incompetent” to do – a familiar happening ever since Mulroney’s campaign to replace Clark as Tory leader: ⁴⁴⁰

“Thus, informed that the prime minister wanted to quit last October and take on the job of secretary general of the United Nations, we have no reason to doubt it. And we should believe he agreed to stay on at the urging of senior Tories and “Liberal senators,” who feared the prime minister’s departure would lead to terminal divisions in the Tory caucus and serious divisions elsewhere possibly “the death knell for the country.”

But the real reason Mulroney did not pursue his opportunity at the UN, [Globe and Mail editor-in-chief William] Thorsell reveals, was Joe Clark. It was because Clark, as constitutional affairs minister, “failed to bridge the gap between Quebec and anglophone ministers” and had so botched the preparations of the government’s constitutional proposals the prime minister had to take over the business and complete the task.

…

So, how come Clark is still on the job. And people should note the curious, and doubtless coincidental, fact that at or about the same time the prime minister had found Clark to be incompetent, someone else had produced a poll showing that if Clark were the Tory leader and prime minister, the party’s public support would more than quadruple.”

The rumored Mulroney-Clark dispute in late-1991/early 1992 the above quote referred to had ended with the departure of Norman Spector, Mulroney’s chief of staff and former Meech Lake accord strategist, whom Mulroney had hired from the B.C. government by way of the University of British Columbia in 1986 where he had been controversial; ⁴⁴¹ that outcome presumably won Clark a freer hand in the upcoming constitutional negotiations.

Shortly after Charlottetown accord’s defeat in a national referendum when I – having recently left UBC and was in a legal dispute with the university and the RCMP ⁴⁴² – began sending out press releases critical of Mulroney’s conduct in the constitutional process, the notion of Mulroney-Clark differences influenced me to call for Clark to stay in the constitutional affairs portfolio and account for what had led to the “constitutional fiasco”: ⁴⁴³

“Before taking up any new tasks, Mr. Joe Clark needs to give the people of Canada an adequate explanation for the recent Charlottetown constitutional fiasco and a satisfactory account of the full extent of damages the latest constitutional adventure of the Tory government has done to both national unity and the economy.”

As discussed previously, later Clark would indeed be kept on the constitutional affairs portfolio by Mulroney but an accounting of constitutional mishandling never came, as Kim Campbell soon took over as prime minister and in the election that followed the federal Tories nationwide came to only two seats away from replicating Richard Hatfield’s 1987 fate of annihilation in New Brunswick.

In July 1992 after reaching the Pearson accord without Quebec, Joe Clark continued to believe – despite Mulroney’s efforts to contradict him – that as long as Quebec was given enough other concessions premier Robert Bourassa would eventually accept Triple-E Senate. ⁴⁴⁴

Near the end of July, Bourassa announced that he would attend the first ministers’ meeting (luncheon) in early August, that would be his first after the Meech Lake accord’s failure; he said he received “total satisfaction” from Ottawa’s response on two of his three preconditions, the “distinct society” issue and the issue of federal-provincial powers over immigration, and would accept the federal government’s commitment on the other, namely that no new province would be created without substantial consensus in every region including Quebec. ⁴⁴⁵

The territory leaders were upset that Mulroney gave Bourassa a commitment over their objection; Northwest Territories intergovernmental affairs minister Stephen Kakfwi felt betrayed, stating, "It was agreed that there would be no bilateral negotiations” (although any agreement must have been with Clark, not Mulroney); the territory leaders and native leaders were also unhappy they were not invited to the first ministers’ lunch, but only tea with Mulroney the day after. ⁴⁴⁶

The first ministers’ luncheon at the prime minister’s summer residence at Harrington Lake took place on August 4, with Joe Clark present; the attendees agreed to meet again informally (so they would not feel the need to invite the native leaders, some of whom led by Assembly of First Nations chief Ovide Mercredi were protesting about being excluded). ⁴⁴⁷

Upon meeting with Bourassa, several premiers began to show changes in their stands: Ontario’s Bob Rae and New Brunswick’s Frank McKenna stated the Pearson accord should be open for renegotiation, or there might not be a deal; Saskatchewan’s Roy Romanow said if something as good or better came along he would change from supporting the accord; Nova Scotia’s Don Cameron and Prince Edward Island’s Joe Ghiz were also ready to abandon Senate equality; and Manitoba’s Gary Filmon refused “to draw lines in the sand”. ⁴⁴⁸

Suddenly, Newfoundland’s Clyde Wells and Alberta’s Don Getty, and unexpectedly B.C.’s Mike Harcourt, looked like the only premiers still firm on a Triple-E Senate (however as discussed previously, Getty had been the one introducing the “joint sitting” mechanism into the Pearson accord and the Triple-E Senate was really only 2.5-E). ⁴⁴⁹

The biggest bombshell of retreating came from Joe Clark telling native leaders during Mulroney’s tea, and then telling the media, that he might have misread the possibility of Bourassa accepting a Triple-E Senate, that even an equal Senate might be up for renegotiation, and that native self-government also needed to be “improved” in order for Quebec to agree to. ⁴⁵⁰

Quebec officials denied accusations that during earlier negotiations premier Bourassa over the telephone had indicated to other premiers equal Senate might be acceptable but then changed his mind after the Pearson accord was struck, but it was confirmed that Bourassa had been consulted by telephone on some of the Triple-E Senate models; one Quebec official said, “Mr. Bourassa told me it will never sell in Quebec. And we’ve always maintained the same argument although we never officially condemned it when the deal was negotiated”. ⁴⁵¹

Bert Brown of Alberta, a leading campaigner for Triple-E Senate, accused Mulroney of jerking “the puppet strings” on the Senate issue, and Mulroney and Bourassa of “dancing to the tune of the elites in Quebec”. ⁴⁵²

NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin reiterated her support for the Pearson accord (despite having been an advocate of Senate abolishment), as did Tory MPs in western Canada; Alberta Tory caucus chair Ken Hughes said there would be “long-term consequences for national unity” if the Triple-E Senate principle was abandoned. ⁴⁵³

Reform party Leader Preston Manning declared that the public would hold Mulroney and Bourassa accountable if the Pearson accord was sabotaged; Manning said Joe Clark had had the authority on behalf of Mulroney to negotiate, and so Mulroney and his cabinet ministers from Quebec should try convincing Quebecers to accept, rather than tinkering with the accord. ⁴⁵⁴

But Joe Clark’s retreat from a Triple-E stand set the stage for Mulroney to bring (back) to the negotiation table various unequal Senate plans; the Pearson accord’s “Triple-E compromise” was now only one of six proposals: one of the other five, cited by Mulroney as from Prince Edward Island Premier Joe Ghiz, would give 24 Senate seats to every province with population of 2 million or more (i.e., Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta), and 8 seats to every other. ⁴⁵⁵

Mulroney scheduled an official meeting of provincial premiers, territorial leaders and native leaders, to begin after mid-August with Quebec premier Bourassa attending, and announced that if it could not reach a new deal he would quickly introduce a unilateral constitutional plan in the parliament that would gear toward the needs of Quebec, and require the passage of only seven provinces representing 50% of the population as per the current Constitution. ⁴⁵⁶

In a national Tory caucus meeting, Tory MPs supported Mulroney’s constitutional-negotiation meeting plan, with Ontario caucus chair Rene Soetens calling the Pearson accord unacceptable to Ontario or Canada, saying that an equal Senate was possible but was too powerful as in the accord; Alberta caucus chair Ken Hughes acknowledged although Alberta MPs again emphasized Triple-E Senate it would be up to a new agreement by the premiers; meanwhile, Joe Clark met with Quebec Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Gil Remillard who told him Quebec was flatly opposed to an equal Senate, and Clark then mentioned to the media the option of an “interim” reform to give B.C. and Alberta a few extra Senate seats and let equal-senate supporters wait for “a better chance later”. ⁴⁵⁷

The particular unequal Senate proposal from Prince Edward Island premier Joe Ghiz cited by Mulroney, i.e., 24 seats for large provinces and 8 for smaller ones, was condemned by Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba; a Saskatchewan official said Mulroney was “deliberately provoking a breakdown of the Senate-reform negotiations” by promoting a proposal that would fail. ⁴⁵⁸

But Prince Edward Island was by far the tiniest province in Canada. Leaders of the other provinces on the small side who had tasted Senate equality with the Pearson accord, especially Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow and New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, were now unwilling to give it up. ⁴⁵⁹

With their respective history of compromise with “undemocratic” constitutional mechanism (i.e., Romanow’s key role in introducing the “Notwithstanding Clause” in 1981-82, and McKenna’s acceptance, despite a recent overwhelming electoral mandate, of the Meech Lake accord institutionalizing provincial veto without Senate reform), these two premiers were now poised, and motivated, to play crucial roles to keep the reformed Senate equal but give away most of its ‘half-Effectiveness’ as in the Pearson accord.

More Specifically, McKenna proposed a “no-net-loss” model of equal Senate – publicized ahead of the final negotiation to begin on August 18 – which called for provinces that would lose Senate seats (especially Quebec and Ontario which would lose a large number) be compensated with the same number of Commons seats; for Senate veto on bills other than taxing natural resources, the McKenna model would simply trigger a joint sitting and joint vote by the Senate and Commons. ⁴⁶⁰

As previously discussed, this overall “joint sitting” mechanism had been in Mulroney’s unilateral constitutional plan to be unveiled on July 15 had the Pearson accord not been reached, and on July 7 when Alberta premier Don Getty put “joint sitting” in the Pearson accord for the 60%-veto scenario, the Triple-E supporters managed to include a 70% absolute veto, with some arguing for a lower, 2/3 absolute veto. ⁴⁶¹

A week before the Pearson accord, former B.C. government constitutional adviser Mel Smith came out openly against this objective of Mulroney’s; in a The Globe and Mail article, Smith called the “joint sitting”-override mechanism a “final insult”, stating no “fair-minded Canadian” should support it: ⁴⁶²

“Instead, when Parliament reconvenes on July 15, the Prime Minister is intending to push for a "reformed" Senate that would reconfirm the dominance of central Canada and keep the rest of us in our place: a Senate of 118 (it is presently 104) with Quebec and Ontario keeping the 24 they now have, and the additional 14 sparsely sprinkled among the rest of the provinces.

It would be elected at the same time as the House of Commons, thus making it a body dominated by the federal party apparatus instead of reflecting regional concerns. The final insult would be that any Senate vote could be overridden by a joint sitting of the Commons and the Senate. Since the Commons is almost three times the size of the Senate and growing, the likelihood would be that the Senate would always be overridden in such a sitting – with the majority of members of the Commons, of course, coming from central Canada.

For such a weak-kneed Senate, the provinces are supposed to be sufficiently grateful that they will give Quebec a veto over any future changes to the Senate. No fair-minded Canadian should support such a proposal.”

For whatever reason an open debate on this “joint sitting” issue never ensued in the Charlottetown constitutional process, perhaps because Mr. Smith didn’t support an equal Senate anyway (who advocated a more equitable Senate seat distribution), ^{463, 464} or maybe the Senate not overriding the Commons had been deemed too important to Quebec – a topic that requires further analysis.

In the final negotiation headed by Mulroney, McKenna’s “no-net-loss” model with joint-sitting veto resolution on ordinary legislation was to become the basis for the Senate in the Charlottetown accord, taking away the Pearson accord’s 70% absolute veto.

John Dafoe, Winnipeg Free Press editor and columnist for The Globe and Mail, expressed his opinion ahead of the final negotiation, that the McKenna model was “utterly pointless”, in the sense that when the senators and MPs sat and vote together it would be the same number of seats for each province before and after the “Senate reform”: ⁴⁶⁵

“The chief disadvantage of the no-net-loss plan – or its surpassing virtue, depending on your point of view – is that it would be utterly pointless. On almost all legislative questions, it would do nothing to change the balance of power in Ottawa, which is what Senate reform was supposed to be all about. If there are no net losers in the plan then, clearly, there are no net gainers either. Under the McKenna plan, the final and clinching vote on a piece of government legislation would take place in the joint session of the Senate and the House of Commons. In that joint session, the relative strength of the

provinces would be almost exactly what it is today in the House of Commons.”

John Dafoe was right when it came to provincial balances, that each province’s total seats in a “joint sitting” would stay the same as proposed by McKenna. But as analyzed (in an earlier part of this blog article) per the estimation of The Ottawa Citizen columnist Don McGillivray, although each province’s joint number would not change the political-party numbers would be different due to the Pearson accord’s adoption of “proportional representation” for the Senate, except that the Senate’s size was small and so the overall joint changes would not matter much in a Commons majority-government situation – and then the Charlottetown accord would further cut the Senate size and drop the “proportional representation” requirement.

Another difference before and after was that, traditionally a legislation was decided by the Commons’ vote (the appointed Senate would try to block or change it only in an unusual situation), but in a joint sitting each province’s relative ratio would not be exactly the same – only “almost exactly” – as in the Commons before; e.g., Ontario’s 99 seats and Quebec’s 75 in the 1988 Commons of 295 ⁴⁶⁶ gave Central Canada a combined 59% in the Commons, but together with 24 Senate seats each in a Senate-Commons total of 399, their combined strength would be only 55.6% in a joint sitting – still dominating the rest of Canada but could be a reduction Mulroney emphasized to other provinces.

On November 20, 1992, ten days after sending out my first press releases critical of Mulroney’s leadership and conduct and requesting constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark to account for “the recent Charlottetown constitutional fiasco” (as quoted earlier), but getting positive feedback from the media, I sent out another press release lambasting Mulroney’s “constitutional adventures” and his pushing Clark aside and resorting to “horse-trading” on constitutional negotiation: ⁴⁶⁷

“His constitutional adventures have done nothing but damages to both national unity and the economy. The horse-trading approach he employed during the final stage of the Charlottetown constitutional negotiation after he pushed Joe Clark aside (Poor Mr. Clark, he never failed Mr. Mulroney, not yet anyway), and discarded proposals based on the efforts of many experts, political leaders and ordinary people, together with his hardball tactics during the referendum campaign, caused the massive No votes across the country and the resulting division and resentments among people.”

To single out Brian Mulroney for all the blames may have been overly simplistic, but in late 1992 it was done attempting to put pressure on the issue of his leadership future.

On the other hand, Frank McKenna’s eagerness for the “joint sitting” type of Senate reform – on top of the last time when he saw no problem with the Meech Lake accord keeping an appointed Senate and giving every province a veto on future changes to the Senate – also makes one wonder what progress truly meant in his historic defeat of Richard Hatfield.

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

Or

(Go to Part 10, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 8)

(Continued from Part 7, previous blog post)

At the end of February 1992 the special Senate-Commons committee should produce its report; timely enough, in mid-February after that month’s first ministers’ meeting Bob Rae had written to Mulroney requesting a first ministers’ meeting on constitutional issues once the committee report was ready, and so on the eve of the report’s expected release – and shortly after Quebec intergovernmental affairs minister Gil Remillard’s comment of “no bluff” when it came to the sovereignty referendum deadline of October 26 – Mulroney extended an invitation to all premiers and territory leaders to a meeting in March to be headed by Joe Clark – the first official meeting on constitutional issues since the Meech Lake accord era. ³³⁶

The report from the Special Joint Committee for a Renewed Canada, or the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee as it was referred to, came out based on inputs from over 600 witnesses at public hearings held in various parts of the country and close to 1,000 attendees in five constitutional policy conferences held in Halifax, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. ³³⁷

But that committee work was completed only after enduring partisan squabbles that had at one point suspended public hearings and in the end substantially reduced their scale, as well as divided committee opinions until the last days. ³³⁸ Following the partisan dispute in November 1991 that had aimed unsuccessfully at removing co-chair, Manitoba Tory Senator Dorothy Dobbie, came the resignation (at his doctor’s advice) of the other co-chair, Quebec Tory Senator Claude Castonguay, who was replaced by Quebec Tory Senator Gerald Beaudoin; the new co-chair had recently finished the Beaudoin-Edwards committee work on the amending formula and adopted the regional veto – a 1971 Victoria Charter idea adopted earlier by the Jean Charest committee just before the Meech Lake accord’s failure as mentioned previously; the regional-veto proposal was very much to the liking of Liberal leader Jean Chretien but was not accepted by constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark. ³³⁹

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was pleased with the joint parliamentary committee report for the reason – important to him – that it contained all the key elements of the Meech Lake accord, and a lot more; Mulroney expressed confidence that his government would “deliver the goods”, and he scoffed at criticisms of his Meech Lake accord approach which had relied on behind-closed-doors negotiations, lashing out at Chretien’s 1981-82 “Kitchen Accord” approach: ³⁴⁰

“There were three men in a kitchen in the middle of the night – while the premier of Quebec was asleep right down the street here. One of the key players – he was asleep when the boys were in the kitchen. So I don’t know why people were so offended by poor old Meech Lake. Meech Lake was quite an improvement over the procedure followed in 1981-82.”

The “three men in a kitchen” in 1981-82 had been then Liberal justice minister Chretien, Saskatchewan NDP attorney general Roy Romanow and Ontario Tory attorney general Roy McMurtry, working on an agreement to bring in the “Notwithstanding Clause” in the kitchen of the Ottawa Conference Centre on the night of November 7, 1981. ³⁴¹

Heading into the federal-provincial negotiations in 1992 – from March to late August when the Charlottetown accord was reached – there were progresses regarding some of the key constitutional issues that had emerged since the failure of the Meech Lake accord in June 1990: Joe Clark was warming up to the ideas of a social charter and the “inherent right” of native self-government; both ideas – championed by Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae – were endorsed by the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee; and the first meeting in March quickly reached an agreement that representatives of the native people would be full participants in the official negotiation – overcoming Clark’s initial objection that the natives did not have a government. ³⁴²

The official negotiation meetings would involve federal government representatives led by Clark and delegations representing the provinces, territories and the aboriginal people, some of them headed by premiers; Clark dubbed it the “Canada Round”, with the Meech Lake negotiations having been the “Quebec Round”. ³⁴³

But this time around there were tight constraints from both Quebec and its opponents: for the time being Quebec premier Robert Bourassa’s government continued to boycott the negotiation (until it could see good results for Quebec), besides having passed a law for a sovereignty referendum no later than October 26, 1992; on the opposite side, two months before Quebec’s enactment of the sovereignty-referendum law then B.C. (Social Credit party) premier Bill Vander Zalm, a strong supporter of Alberta’s Triple-E Senate stand, had brought in a law requiring a provincial referendum for approval of any constitutional deal – doing so days before his resignation amid the “Fantasy Gardens” scandal (a subject of interest to me also). ^{344, 345, 346}

Adding to these provincial political intrigues integrating new popular-support requirements was the Mulroney Conservatives’ ‘secret’ agenda to institute a very weak Senate out of Senate reform.

An elected Senate had been on the agenda of discussion during the Meech Lake accord era when Mulroney adopted the idea of Senate appointments from lists of candidates submitted by the provinces – something dubbed by columnist Don McGillivray as “bait in a mousetrap” because it would have made an elected Senate impossible to achieve due to the accord’s acceptance of provincial veto on future constitutional changes, as previously discussed.

A full Senate reform prior to adoption of a veto rule then became a primary motivation for post-Meech Lake constitutional reform. In 1992, it would become the most contentious constitutional issue – a potential “deal breaker” – given the Mulroney government’s intent on instituting an elected but weakened Senate: ³⁴⁷

“The Tories believe the country would be ungovernable and Parliament would be in constant deadlock if the Senate could defeat bills approved by the Commons.”

The Senate-reform movement had been led by Alberta, especially by the upstart Reform party there championing the idea of a Triple-E (Elected, Equal, Effective) Senate, with a young Stephen Harper as the party’s chief policy adviser; but in early 1992 other than Alberta Tory premier Don Getty – with some support from Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells and Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon – few believed an effective Senate with equal seats for every province would be achievable in the face of strong opposition from Quebec which would see its current 24 Senate seats reduced to only several; constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark deemed a 3-E Senate as likely as “virgin birth”. ³⁴⁸

In the more realistic scenario of a 2-E Senate (one that is elected), or two-and-a-half-E Senate, the politics was pitching the Mulroney Conservatives wanting substantially reduced Senate powers against others wanting more Senate powers, and Alberta’s Tory government holding the position of equal Senate but otherwise content with protecting regional interests when it came to Senate power – and willing to oppose Bob Rae’s social-charter push – against various ideas of an ‘equitable’ Senate such as the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee’s recommendation of equal seats for each of five regions – of which the largest provinces of Ontario and Quebec would each be a region (similar to the regions in the notion of regional veto). ³⁴⁹

The undercurrents of the politics were also pitching Brian Mulroney against Joe Clark (as leader of the progressive wing in the Tory party), with Mulroney continuing to stay on the Meech Lake accord thinking and privately telling others that Clark was “incompetent”; in January 1992 Clark had to threaten to resign in order to push Meech Lake accord strategist Norman Spector out as Mulroney’s chief of staff. ³⁵⁰

In contrast to the Mulroney Conservatives’ agenda and Alberta premier Don Getty’s preoccupation, in a constitutional conference held in Calgary on Senate reform (one of the five policy conferences) many attendees expressed the desire for the reformed Senate to focus on social economic issues rather than regional interests: ³⁵¹

“In fact, many participants balked at the assumption that the Senate should represent regional interests, saying they would rather it was restructured as a forum for Canadians who feel left out of the political process – women, aboriginal peoples, linguistic and ethnic minorities, labor groups and the poor.”

The ascent of NDP governments in B.C. and Saskatchewan in October 1991 also represented setbacks for the Triple-E Senate drive: despite most British Columbians’ support for an equal Senate, B.C. premier Mike Harcourt’s government staked out the traditional NDP position of Senate abolishment, or in the alternate a regionally equal Senate in which the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and B.C. would each be one of five regions. ³⁵²

The controversial provincial veto in the Meech Lake accord on certain future constitutional changes, that had incurred fierce criticisms in 1987-1990 as previously detailed, was still here: after the Beaudoin-Edwards committee recommendation of a regional veto in the the amending formula was rejected by Clark, the Beaudoin-Dobbie committee and its report explored other ways to give Quebec a veto that would not be a provincial veto or regional veto, but what it considered would only give Quebec more veto power over English Canada – counter to the other provinces’ desire (particularly Alberta’s) for equality; Joe Clark made the statement that the provincial veto might be the only solution. ³⁵³

Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells reiterated his 1990 proposal made in the last weeks of the Meech Lake accord – which in its unchanged form he then helped kill – to give Quebec senators special veto power over “constitutional changes that would affect the province’s language, culture or civil law tradition”, but not beyond that extent. ³⁵⁴

Wells was in a better position this time: starting with the September 1991 federal constitutional proposal, Quebec’s distinctness as a “distinct society” was described as (including) its language, culture and civil law tradition, similar to Wells’s idea in his proposal of special Senate veto for Quebec; in addition, a modified version of the special Senate veto – to be exercised by Francophone senators over matters affecting French language and culture – was adopted in the February 1992 Beaudoin-Dobbie committee report; however, limiting Quebec’s special privilege to only such an extent would be more difficult because of Quebec nationalist opposition. ³⁵⁵

Meanwhile, Mulroney seemed to have smartened up from the Mecch Lake accord debacle when it came to Quebec/provincial veto, and began to float the idea that parts of the constitutional reform, such as the “distinct society” status for Quebec, could go ahead under the current amending formula of approval by seven provinces representing 50% of the population; but Bourassa insisted Quebec would not sign the Constitution until it included a guarantee of Quebec veto. ³⁵⁶

When the full constitutional negotiation led by Joe Clark went forward in April 1992 with the aboriginal leaders onboard it made immediate progress in that area, announcing a “historic breakthrough” – the first in the negotiation – to entrench the “inherent right” of native self-government in the Constitution; although most of the details remained to be worked out, Ontario premier Bob Rae praised the progress and addressed it as an issue of ‘decolonization’ – a topic that could be touchy for some Canadians as the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America was arriving (in October two weeks before the Quebec sovereignty referendum deadline); ³⁵⁷ Rae said: ³⁵⁸

“We are now ready to accept the notion of de-colonizing our relationship with
aboriginal peoples.”

Another ‘breakthrough’ was soon announced, that of entrenching a social charter in the Constitution, also championed by Bob Rae. ³⁵⁹

In April Bob Rae was also the source of surprise leading to optimism in the difficult area of Senate reform: the negotiation quickly reached the consensus that a new Senate should be ‘Elected’, and Rae, representing the largest province with the most appointed Senate seats (same as Quebec at 24), hinted that Ontario would be open to a Senate with ‘Equal’ seats for every province provided its ‘Effectiveness’ was reduced – it should not have the “same power as” or be able to “cancel the work of” the House of Commons; Alberta’s intergovernmental affairs minister Jim Horsman immediately responded that the Alberta government’s proposed “bottom-line” Triple-E Senate would be mostly a chamber of “sober second thought”, i.e., with very limited veto power on legislations. ³⁶⁰

Joe Clark was pleased with the spirit of compromise on Senate reform; reversing his earlier pessimism he predicted the end of May as when a first ministers conference could be held (to finalize a constitutional deal); but while boycotting the official negotiation Quebec premier Bourassa was travelling in Canada to hold one-to-one meetings with the other premiers, and he vowed publicly to fight against the move toward equal Senate. ³⁶¹

Soon Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia joined Alberta, Manitoba and Newfoundland in supporting an equal Senate (Nova Scotia Tory premier Don Cameron had earlier stated his province would have preferred an equal Senate but an effective Senate was more important). ³⁶²

Despite the newfound optimism for a (if not 3-E) 2.5-E Senate as a result of Bob Rae’s openness toward compromise, Ontario’s interests would dictate Rae’s positions, meaning that his positions could often be closer to those of Quebec premier Bourassa’s given the large population and large number of current Senate seats both provinces had, to those of the Mulroney Conservatives’ with their intent on a weaker Senate (for the Mulroney Conservatives if it was elected, or for Rae if it was equal), or even to the traditional NDP view of Senate abolishment (which B.C. premier Mike Harcourt adhered to); on the other side of the negotiation table, as leader for a Triple-E Senate Alberta Tory premier Don Getty also had a very weak “bottom line” on Senate power.

Such provincial focuses would not bode well for any real drive toward a Triple-E Senate.

Regarding the issue of a Quebec veto which in the Meech Lake accord had taken the form of a veto for every province, several provinces led by Alberta stood firm that there would be no constitutional veto until a new Senate was in place that would please the rest of Canada; the other four (of the five) main elements of the Meech Lake accord were steadily accepted, including the “distinct society” status for Quebec. ³⁶³

At the end of May 1992, an “extraordinary” amount of progress – with broad agreements on 14 key issues – was announced by Clark. ³⁶⁴

But by this time Clark was still unable to obtain a breakthrough on the makeup and powers of the Senate, and no full constitutional deal was in sight despite his optimistic prediction in April; on June 1, Rae told the media he was going to – ahead of the next round of negotiation on June 9-10 – engage in a lot of telephone conversations with the other first ministers including prime minister Mulroney and Quebec premier Bourassa, to try to get a deal on three remaining key issues: Senate makeup, strengthening the country’s economic union and federal-provincial trust, and the constitutional amending formula. ³⁶⁵

The feedback from the Quebec government was negative on an equal Senate, and so when the negotiation resumed in June Clark warned that if the Triple-E Senate supporters did not compromise there might not be Senate reform; two of the three NDP premiers, Ontario’s Bob Rae and Saskatchewan’s Roy Romanow, also began to advocate the NDP view of abolishing the Senate. ³⁶⁶

In this stalemate, an unconventional idea of an equal Senate in which senators from Ontario and Quebec would have their votes counted more than others, began to attract attention; the idea was suggested by Quebec businessman and premier Bourassa’s friend Claude Beauchamp, who pitched it to New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna who in turn suggested – to accommodate Alberta – equal votes when it came to legislation affecting natural resources involving provincial rights; Joe Clark liked the idea, and flew Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow on a Challenger jet back from New York and to New York again afterwards where Romanow had been visiting bankers, so Romanow could consult with Bob Rae, Nova Scotia premier Donald Cameron and Prince Edward Island premier Joe Ghiz and come up with a proposal for this type of an ‘equal’ Senate. ³⁶⁷

It’s interesting to note the coincidence that Roy Romanow, the experienced behind-closed-doors negotiator with a history involving the “Notwithstanding Clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Frank McKenna, who among the three provincial premiers elected after the 1987 Meech Lake accord was the most willing to let it through in 1990, were now eager with this model of ‘equal’ Senate with unequal voting power.

Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells, the old foe of Mulroney’s Meech Lake accord, now became the only one firmly opposed to this Romanow model of different number of votes for a different senator, calling it “demeaning and insulting” and saying he would call a provincial referendum to fight it if it became part of the deal; Bob Rae, on the other hand, really liked it. ³⁶⁸

But it wasn’t as if Wells’s own constitutional ideas had been completely discarded. Broad details worked out during the June negotiation for the “inherent right” of native self-government included not only a clause in the Constitution to preserve and promote aboriginal distinctiveness, and court enforceability of the self-government right, but also special aboriginal Senate seats with the possibility of veto power on matters affecting natives; columnist Don McGillivray noted: ³⁶⁹

“Aboriginals would be guaranteed Senate seats separate from the provincial division of seats. These aboriginal senators might have the right to veto laws “in relation to certain matters materially affecting aboriginal people.””

This native-matters-only Senate veto for the aboriginal people was apparently the same type Wells had proposed for Quebec, only that here it was adapted to protecting native rights. A year earlier, the Beaudoin-Edwards committee on the amending formula had suggested that native people be given a veto over constitutional changes that would affect their rights; but the committee had also intended to exclude aboriginal issues from the current constitutional reform and incurred criticism from Assembly of First Nations chief Ovide Mercredi who said to delay native participation would be to return to the Meech Lake accord approach. ³⁷⁰

Notwithstanding progresses in other areas of the negotiation in June 1992, Clyde Wells would not budge on Triple-E Senate, believing the Romanow model of unequal voting powers would not be it; Wells was unswayed by prime minister Mulroney personally who invited the premiers to a special lunch session (which Quebec’s Bourassa still refused to attend) to try to soften the Triple-E side; Wells’s determination influenced Don Getty to reaffirm that Alberta was still with Triple-E. ³⁷¹

During the negotiation around the Romanow model, drastic elimination of most Senate powers were seriously considered, such as a Senate without absolute veto for anything but taxation bills affecting natural resources and forestry: ³⁷²

“The five provinces favoring Triple E (Alberta, Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia) dropped demands for an absolute Senate veto on everything but taxation bills affecting natural resources and forestry.”

Such willingness to back down by the Triple-E supporters on Senate veto power apparently reflected Alberta premier Don Getty’s “bottom line” on Senate, that it would protect the interests of a natural-resources based province Alberta had been, but should not be as strong in areas of federal jurisdiction. ³⁷³

The Mulroney government objected to any Senate veto power at all for an equal Senate: ³⁷⁴

“But Rae said he still could not accept equality of the provinces in the Senate, and Clark said the federal government has “a great deal of difficulty” with any veto powers for an equal Senate.”

Joe Clark’s own concern regarding Senate veto power was that the small provinces could become too powerful, when 60% of the senators would come from the six smaller provinces representing only 17% of the total population. ³⁷⁵

Out with the public, Reform leader Preston Manning travelled to Ottawa to complain to the Triple-E supporters that they gave up too much, and call for these provinces to hold firm on the Senate model that would have the most public support, warning against surrender in the haste behind closed doors: ³⁷⁶

“If they think they’re in a wringer now, there’s one worse wringer to be in and that’s to agree to something at these conferences that can’t carry the judgment of the people back home.”

After his luncheon with the premiers in late June, Mulroney told native leaders that everything now hinged on the impasse over Senate reform, and he issued an ultimatum that if the negotiation could not resolve it by July 15 his government would table a unilateral constitutional package at the Parliament and possibly call a national referendum to decide on constitutional reform, noting that the current Constitution required the support of only seven provinces representing 50% of the population for a constitutional amendment (although granting a constitutional veto to Quebec would still require consent of all provinces). ³⁷⁷

Under pressure from Mulroney’s deadline, the premiers agreed to another meeting among themselves to try to get a deal, to be held on Friday, July 3, and chaired by B.C. premier Mike Harcourt – with constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark attending in an unofficial capacity. ³⁷⁸

Prime Minister Mulroney left on that day for Europe, to attend the annual G-7 summit, July 6-8, in Munich, Germany, but he would return immediately after to “prepare for the return of Parliament on July 15”, skipping a second summit he had intended to attend in Helsinki for the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. ³⁷⁹

From July 3 to July 7, with Mulroney out of Canada, the premiers (minus Quebec’s Bourassa) and Joe Clark reached a full constitutional deal, which included an elected and equal Senate with some general veto powers that were stronger for taxation bills affecting natural resources but less for other legislations. ³⁸⁰

The July 7 constitutional deal – known as the “Pearson Accord” ³⁸¹ – would become the basis on which Quebec premier Robert Bourassa was invited to first ministers’ meetings led by prime minister Brian Mulroney to forge a final constitutional deal; but its ‘Triple-E’ Senate part was not liked by Mulroney, and when the Charlottetown Accord was reached in August among the changes from the Pearson Accord most of the Senate veto powers would be stripped away.

A number of issues in the Pearson accord are of particular interest here.

In addition to recognizing aboriginal people’s “inherent right” of self-government, the Pearson accord would indeed provide guarantee in the Constitution for special Senate seats for aboriginal people, but with details to be worked out later. ³⁸²

Clyde Wells’s idea of special Senate veto for Quebec (on matters affecting Quebec’s language, culture and civil law tradition) was also adapted as a mechanism where the approval by majority of Francophone senators (in addition to approval by majority of the Senate) would be required to pass “federal legislation that materially affects French language and culture”. ³⁸³

This special veto involving majority of Francophone senators did not exactly amount to a Quebec veto on major constitutional changes, as the Francophone senators were not required to be all Quebecers, and a constitutional amendment affecting Quebec would not necessarily materially affect French language and culture.

The Pearson accord separately provided a provincial veto for constitutional changes related to the Senate: ³⁸⁴

“Amendments to provisions of the Constitution related to the Senate should require unanimous agrement of Parliament and the provincial legislatures, once the current set of amendments related to Senate reform have come into effect.”

In other words, Quebec and every other province would have a veto on future constitutional changes related to the Senate after the current Senate reform was completed – to Don Getty’s satisfaction as he had said all along; the veto was provided only for changes to the Senate and not for other constitutional changes.

Although “civil law tradition” was not explicitly among the term “French language and culture”, the accord separately stipulated that at least three of the nine Supreme Court members “must have been admitted to the civil law bar of Quebec”; to protect this Quebec special privilege, the accord also said that future changes to the composition of the Supreme Court “should require the unanimous consent of Parliament and the provincial legislatures”, i.e., a provincial veto was specifically granted for this. ³⁸⁵

Recall that the worst controversy with the Meech Lake accord had been a veto it would have given to every province – as Quebec had wanted it and other provinces had wanted equality – on future constitutional changes involving the Senate, the House of Commons and the Supreme Court; at the time critics warned such unanimity requirement would make future changes to these fundamental institutions – including the old Senate – impossible. The Pearson accord took a more cautious approach, incorporating a provincial veto on future constitutional changes to a fundamental institution only after necessary reform was carried out on the institution; beyond that, the Francophone (mostly Quebecers, but the 1982 constitution had recognized French language as an official language of Canada as much as English) were granted veto power to protect their own language and culture.

Nonetheless, this improved approach to permitting future constitutional veto was still not as strictly (i.e., only) self protection for Quebec (as a “distinct society”) as Clyde Wells had envisioned.

Columnist Christopher Young was no longer warning about the danger of provincial veto contributing to a breakup of Canada as he had been with the Meech Lake accord discussed before; still, he called it “smart politics, lousy statesmanship”. ³⁸⁶

On Senate veto power in general, the Pearson accord categorized legislations into: bills materially affecting French language and culture, revenue and expenditure bills, bills involving fundamental tax policy changes directly related to natural resources, and ordinary legislation. ³⁸⁷

A Senate majority defeat or amending of a revenue and expenditure bill would only lead to a “30-day suspensive veto” which could be overridden after that time by re-passing the bill in the Commons; but a Senate majority defeat of a bill involving fundamental tax policy changes directly related to natural resources – a matter of special interest to Alberta as earlier noted – would end the bill. ³⁸⁸

The most interesting, and controversial, part of the Senate veto power as provided in the Pearson accord was with ordinary legislation: a 70%-vote rejection was required to defeat a bill for good, while a rejection by between 60% and 70% of the senators voting would trigger a “joint sitting” of the Senate and the Commons, where a joint vote would determine the bill’s fate. ³⁸⁹

Below 70% supermajority, when 8 senators each from ten provinces, 2 from each of the two northern territories and several additional aboriginal senators sat together with 312 Commons MPs, ³⁹⁰ the Senators’ voting power would be very meagre.

Barring this “joint sitting” mechanism Senate power was meant to be real. Overall it was “only about half-way to being Effective”. ³⁹¹

This Senate half-effectiveness could still be serious when one noticed that the Senate’s political-party composition was likely to be very different from that of the Commons due to the Pearson accord’s choice of a sort of “proportional representation” for Senate election, instead of the ““first-past-the-post” system used in elections to the House of Commons and the provincial legislatures”; columnist Don McGillivray immediately calculated that the Mulroney Tories’ 1988 Commons majority had been based on a national vote that would have given them only 35 senators – 42% in the Senate – versus 30 senators for the Liberals and 18 for the NDP – a combined 57% opposition majority – and one for the Reform party. ³⁹²

So in this scenario there would be a stable Tory majority government to be balanced by a Senate with a Liberal-NDP bent (the Pearson accord did not permit defeat of a bill in the Senate to trigger an election or allow senators to serve in the cabinet), except that when the Senate mustered 60% (above its 57% Liberal-NDP majority) to oppose a Commons legislation the senators would need to sit together with the MPs, and the Commons’ larger size would see the 60% senators overpowered in a joint voting.

Take the example of 169 Tory MPs out of a Commons of 295 (57% Tory majority), as elected in 1988, ³⁹³ sitting with a reformed Senate of 84: with no free vote in the Commons the Tories would only need the support of 21 senators – a merely 25% of the Senate – to reach 190, i.e., over half of the 379 total; with the Pearson accord’s enlarged Commons of 312, the Tories’ Commons majority would stretch further and need fewer senators to win in a joint voting (assuming the ratio of the Tory majority stayed the same in the larger Commons).

A conclusion is that the Pearson accord was a fundamental improvement over the Meech Lake accord but had some genuine deficiencies, and that the newly devised Senate-Commons “joint sitting” mechanism was a big problem standing in the way of meaningful and effective Senate power.

Yet, intriguingly when the Charlottetown accord was finally reached in August, under Mulroney’s direct supervision and starting from the Pearson accord, there would be no 70% absolute veto – nothing else but “joint sitting” – in the Senate’s veto power on ordinary legislation – and with only 6 senators (instead of 8 ) from each of the ten provinces, 1 (instead of 2) from each territory and several from the aboriginal people, but with 337 MPs instead of 312 (Quebec and Ontario would receive additional Commons seats in exchange for the loss of current Senate seats). ³⁹⁴

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

Or

(Go to Part 9, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 7)

(Continued from Part 6, previous blog post)

If prime minister Jean Chretien could consistently get away with convenient political hyperboles which he probably only pretended to be serious, and with his “undemocratic practices” quashing Liberal internal dissent and discouraging debate on issues, that is likely because prime minister Brian Mulroney’s political schemes had often been viewed as sinister.

When Mulroney appointed 15 senators during August-September 1990 on his way to acquire a Tory majority in the Senate in order to defeat Liberal resistance to his unpopular GST bill, in typical Mulroney style some of his patronage appointments caused not just controversies but outrage.

Leading the patronage controversies was the appointment of then Nova Scotia premier John Buchanan, (not because Buchanan was the first-ever sitting provincial premier to be appointed senator but) because the Buchanan government was under active RCMP investigation for his alleged accepting kickbacks and giving government work to his friends. ²⁷⁹

One politician who came out strongly against Mulroney on the Buchanan appointment was, surprisingly, rookie Tory MP Stan Wilbee – two years before his 1992 leadership-review call when by that time he would be B.C. Tory caucus chair and chair of the Commons committee on health issues (as previously discussed). Wilbee said in 1990: ²⁸⁰

“… this (Buchanan’s appointment) is a flouting of a tradition of Canadian government and just a throwback to the days of (former Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott) Trudeau, who had complete disregard for the people of Canada.”

Prior to attending a Tory caucus meeting in September 1990, Wilbee had announced he was ready to quit the party over the Buchanan issue and sit in the Commons as an independent; but Mulroney held a meeting with him and Wilbee backed down, stating that he realized the difficulty of getting re-elected as an independent and that he could be more effective working within the Tory caucus. ²⁸¹

So by the time when I got involved in the issue of Mulroney’s leadership in November 1992, being a B.C. MP and a medical doctor Stan Wilbee was actually sitting in pretty good parliamentary positions, albeit outside the government, considering his previous, highly publicized intent to quit the Tory party; and he was for a second time speaking out against Mulroney (not counting his opposition of the 1992 Charlottetown constitutional accord).

But Wilbee’s willingness to take open stands opposite Mulroney’s wasn’t enough to save him later from the nationwide tide sweeping away the Tories during the 1993 election, when he would come in third in his B.C. Delta riding behind Reform party’s John Cummins and Liberal party’s Karen Morgan; Wilbee placed the blame for his and the Progressive Conservative party’s election losses at Mulroney, and at “Mulroney’s campaign team” Kim Campbell inherited: ²⁸²

“She started off well but one of her problems was she inherited Mulroney’s campaign team”.

As previously discussed, in December 1992, i.e., two months before announcing his intent to resign, Mulroney had already given Campbell his entire campaign team made up of persons who had helped him win his leadership in 1983 – including Frank Moores. ²⁸³

Back in September 1990 when Brian Mulroney was under challenge on the GST from the Liberal-controlled Senate, and Stan Wilbee reacted to Mulroney’s tactics by talking about quitting the Tories, Mulroney was at a low point due to the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, which had been reached by his government and the provincial governments in 1987 but failed to be ratified by the deadline in June 1990.

The late columnist Don McGillivray described certain ways in which Mulroney extracted agreement from the provincial leaders as ‘bait-and-trap’, in an article “Senate reform like bait in a mousetrap”, dated February 9, 1989: ²⁸⁴

“Mulroney may be stalling Alberta’s rush to Senate reform for two reasons. First, like all prime ministers, he likes patronage. And he doesn’t want to jump the gun because Senate reform is the bait by which he hopes to lure the provinces into approving the Meech Lake deal.

And it’s like the cheese in the mousetrap, to be seen and sniffed but not to be enjoyed. If Meech Lake is ever approved, Senate reform is dead forever.

This is because every province will get a veto over changes to the Senate.”

What McGillivray said was that one of the Meech Lake accord’s provisions, that of Senate appointments to be made from lists submitted by provincial governments, was still far from the goal of an elected Senate aspired to by many Canadians, particularly Albertans, and that if the provincial governments were enticed by this modest progress in ‘Senate reform’ to pass the constitutional amendment they would be trapped in a situation where real Senate reform would become impossible – due to the accord’s requirement of unanimous provincial agreement for future constitutional amendments; McGillivray felt that this ‘bait-and-trap’ was intentional because Mulroney liked the patronage Senate. ²⁸⁵

When Canada was founded as a British dominion in 1867, the British North America Act establishing it became its Constitution – updated only by the power of the British parliament – until prime minister Pierre Trudeau ‘repatriated’ a modern Constitution in April 1982 in a ceremony attended by Queen Elizabeth II. ²⁸⁶ The 1982 Constitution had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms with protection for the basic rights and freedoms, recognition of English and French as the official languages, and recognition of “existing” aboriginal and treaty rights of the native people; it also specified a future constitutional amending formula, under which major constitutional changes would require approval by the parliament and by at least two-thirds of the provincial legislatures representing at least 50% of the population of all provinces; but the 1982 Constitution left the national political institutions unchanged – including the appointed Senate modeled after the British “House of Lords” but without a peerage system and with a mandatory retirement age of 75. ²⁸⁷

In 1981 in reaching an agreement between the federal government and nine provinces (without Quebec) on the new Constitution, there was a “kitchen” episode involving a crucial compromise worked out among then justice minister Jean Chretien, Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry, and Saskatchewan attorney general Roy Romanow, at Chretien’s Ottawa home and then in a fifth-floor kitchen of the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa, regarding what rights should be in the Constitution: at the time, Trudeau felt that minority-language educational rights (i.e., rights of French education for people of French heritage in an English region, and vice versa) were his bottom line and that the usual fundamental rights could be for a national referendum to decide, but he had difficulty getting agreement of the provinces and was thinking about the federal government going it alone; Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois premier Rene Levesque wanted both the minority-language rights and the fundamental rights to be decided by a referendum; then in late 1981 the “kitchen” players initiated a compromise whereby the federal government and the nine English-speaking provinces would accept the minority-language rights but would add a “notwithstanding clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that the parliament or a provincial legislature would have the option to ‘suspend’ the “fundamental freedoms”, “legal rights” or “equality rights” in the Charter, i.e., to make a legislation exempt from the rights and freedoms; Trudeau agreed to this “McMurtry formula” on the ‘sunset’ condition that any ‘suspension’ would need to be re-enacted every 5 years. ²⁸⁸

The “McMurtry formula” later became known as the “Kitchen Accord” Jean Chretien was proud of; Chretien’s Liberal successor Paul Martin has expressed that he was ashamed of the “notwithstanding clause”, while Canadians have been divided about it. ²⁸⁹ In any case, controversies about Chretien’s convenient “undemocratic” tendencies date back to when he was a key member of the Trudeau government.

In late 1981 Quebec’s Levesque refused to sign the agreement for the new Constitution, claiming that his province had the right to exercise a veto based on English-French duality in Canada, or alternately unanimity among provinces was required for constitutional change; a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1982 found insufficient evidence to support Quebec’s claim of a right to veto based on duality, and found the notion of a unanimity requirement among all provinces contradictory to that of English-French duality. ²⁹⁰

The new Constitution’s mention of existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the native people was won near the last minute in 1981, after years of native protests led by the National Indian Brotherhood (predecessor of the Assembly of First Nations) and intense pressure put on the British parliament by the Canadian natives; however the natives continued to seek recognition of “title” rather than “rights”, a veto similar to what Quebec claimed, as well as a greater political role. ^{291, 292}

During the 1984 election Tory leader Brian Mulroney expressed sympathy toward Quebec separatists who opposed the “Centralistic” attitudes of the Liberal government; after he became prime minister and in 1985 Quebec Liberal leader Robert Bourassa became premier (again), negotiations for a constitutional amendment to accommodate Quebec began with a 1986 summary of five demands from Quebec: recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, a guarantee of increased provincial powers on immigration to Quebec, limits on federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction, a Quebec say in Supreme Court of Canada appointments, and a Quebec “right of veto” on future constitutional changes. ^{293, 294}

The Meech Lake accord reached in 1987 by the federal government and all provinces gave Quebec better concessions in most areas of the five demands than Bourassa had originally asked for, but it was achieved in accordance with the Mulroney Tories’ decentralization agenda; thus, whereas Quebec alone would be recognized as a “distinct society” for its unique French culture, in most of the other areas the same or similar concessions would be granted to all provinces; in particular, future constitutional changes concerning the Senate, the House of Commons and the Supreme Court would require consent by every province in Canada. ²⁹⁵

The Meech Lake accord also featured a small step of Senate reform whereby Senate appointments would be made from lists of candidates submitted by the provinces.

In retirement from politics, Pierre Trudeau was very critical of many aspects of the Quebec demands, of the Meech Lake accord acceding to these demands, and of the Mulroney government’s decentralization objectives. Trudeau said of the decentralization and the provincial veto: ²⁹⁶

“For those who – despite all the Canadian government’s largesse with power and with funds – might still have been hesitant to sign the Meech Lake accord, the prime minister had two more surprises up his sleeve. From now on, the Canadian government won’t be able to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court and the Senate except people designated by the provinces! And from now on, any province that doesn’t like an important constitutional amendment will have the power to either block the passage of that amendment or to opt out of it, with “reasonable compensation” as a reward!

…

What a dark day for Canada was this April 30, 1987! In addition to surrendering to the provinces important parts of its jurisdiction (the spending power, immigration), in addition to weakening the Charter of Rights, the Canadian state made subordinate to the provinces its legislative power (Senate) and its judicial power (Supreme Court); and it did this without hope of ever getting any of it back (a constitutional veto granted to each province). It even committed itself to a constitutional “second round” at which the demands of the provinces will dominate the agenda.”

Some others, including Liberal leader John Turner who gave cautious endorsement to the accord, expressed opposition to the provincial veto; in an article first published on February 20, 1988 in The Gazette and The Vancouver Sun and two days later in The Windsor Star, the late columnist Christopher Young of The Ottawa Citizen pointed to the potential break-up crisis developing in Yugoslavia where Mulroney’s wife Mila was from, and warned Canadians to take a look in relation to the provincial-veto issue before deciding to accept the Meech Lake accord: ^{297, 298}

“Prime Minister Mulroney in particular should take a look, in the light of his decision at Meech Lake to concede a constitutional veto power to every Canadian province.

He may soon have the chance. At meetings in Ottawa and Calgary last week, Mulroney told Yugoslav Prime Minister Branko Mikulic that he and his Yugoslav-born wife, Mila, may accept an invitation to visit the country in September or October.

…

Yugoslavia is in a deep crisis, both economic and political, a crisis aggravated and made more difficult to solve by a constitution that allows each of the country’s six republics and two provinces a veto on major constitutional change.”

Despite these and a few other voices of opposition, prime minister Mulroney forged ahead, fought and won the 1988 election campaigning on the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and the Meech Lake accord, stating during the election campaign, “A vote for the [federal] Liberals on Nov. 21 is a vote to kill Meech Lake”. ²⁹⁹

Although Mulroney won a second majority term, afterwards a larger chorus of voices in the media could be heard dissenting on the Meech Lake accord, as the more conservative began to join Trudeau and the small band of leftwing voices opposing it, pointing out that the provincial-veto issue was a serious sticking point making the accord unacceptable and dangerous to Canada. ³⁰⁰

The opposing opinions were bolstered by changes in the provincial political landscapes ahead of the 3-year timeline to ratify the accord by June 1990.

On October 13, 1987, New Brunswick Liberals under Frank McKenna toppled premier Richard Hatfield’s Tory government and won all 58 seats in the legislature; in 1988, Manitoba Tories under Gary Filmon defeated the New Democrats under premier Howard Pawley, winning a minority government; and in 1989, Newfoundland Liberals under Clyde Wells defeated Tories under Tom Rideout who had succeeded premier Brian Peckford, although in this case it would take a while for Wells to act tough as he was humbled by the loss of his own seat on April 20 and had to stand in a by-election – but unopposed as both the Tories and the NDP chose not to run against the new premier-elect. ³⁰¹

All three new provincial leaders objected to the Meech Lake accord as it had been, and became holdouts requesting major changes.

Among the three, premier Frank McKenna was the least demanding, asking only for a companion accord to strengthen minority rights (he would serve as premier for 10 years, similar to Chretien later did as prime minister, and has been active in the national scene – in particular as Canadian ambassador to U.S.). ^{302, 303}

Premier Gary Filmon became opposed only after the Manitoba New Democrats under new leader Gary Doer joined the provincial Liberals under Sharon Carstairs to demand changes to the accord or defeat of Filmon’s minority Tory government; but once committed, Filmon called for a full Senate reform for the Senate to be elected and equal (an equal number of all-elected senators from every province), preferably with the same powers it already had, and that if this could not be achieved within a short timeframe the provincial-veto provision be dropped and negotiations continue under the 1982 Constitution’s amending formula, i.e., approval by two-thirds of the provinces representing at least 50% of the population. ³⁰⁴

Filmon’s opposition to the accord rekindled a debate over whether there could be a veto formula that would not be either a Quebec-only veto or a veto for every province; Quebec premier Robert Bourassa and incoming Liberal leader Jean Chretien had favored a regional-veto approach in which the large provinces of Quebec and Ontario would each count as a region and every other province part of some region; it was an old idea dating back to the 1971 Victoria Charter time when a relatively fresh prime minister Trudeau and first-time Quebec premier Bourassa were trying their hands at constitutional reform, but in May 1990 the all-party parliamentary committee on the Meech Lake accord, headed by future Tory leader Jean Charest, included it as well as McKenna’s idea of a companion accord among 23 recommended changes to the Meech Lake accord. ³⁰⁵

Filmon continued to insist that no province should have a constitutional veto.

Premier Clyde Wells put forth some carefully thought out ideas, including a reformed, equal and elected Senate, and a provincial veto exercised in the Senate by Quebec senators only and limited to matters affecting Quebec’s linguistic and cultural rights and its civil law: ³⁰⁶

“Extending a constitutional veto to all provinces would effectively halt all significant future constitutional change.

Newfoundland recommends that Quebec’s proposal for a constitutional veto be addressed through special votes in the Senate. Quebec, through its senators acting at the national level, would have an effective veto over constitutional amendments affecting linguistic or cultural rights, or civil law judges on the Supreme Court of Canada.”

In early June 1990 ahead of the deadline, prime minister Mulroney managed to use pressure and promises of future constitutional reforms including Senate reform to get an agreement from all provincial premiers to ratify the Meech Lake accord by the deadline without any change – all except Clyde Wells who said he would either hold a provincial referendum and let the outcome decide or allow his Liberal members of the House of Assembly a free vote in the legislature. ³⁰⁷

But when the deadline of of June 23 arrived, Clyde Wells had done nothing to put the accord to a vote in Newfoundland; he made the decision after an aboriginal people’s campaign – with Manitoba Legislative Assembly member Elijah Harper as their point man – had prevented the accord from being introduced in the Manitoba legislature, with the natives objecting to the negotiations’ exclusion of native participation and the accord’s exclusion of aboriginal issues; at that point Wells decided to rebuff Tory Senate leader Lowell Murray’s proposal of extending the deadline and let the accord expire. ³⁰⁸

That act of ‘good riddance’ by Clyde Wells became such a lasting sour point between Mulroney and Wells that later on February 24, 1993 when announcing his intent to retire, Mulroney again criticized Wells for not putting the Meech Lake accord to a vote in 1990 and thus betraying a written promise, and Mulroney also revealed that he would have retired in August 1990 – (just in case people were glad to see him go!) – had it not been for the Meech Lake accord’s failure and a number of other issues, including the emerging GST fight with the Chretien Liberals in the Senate and the discovery that Robert Bourassa had cancer. ³⁰⁹

Mulroney’s disappointment with Wells for the latter’s role in the failure to ratify the Meech Lake accord is understandable given the Newfoundland Tories’ prior gesture in 1989 not to oppose Wells in a by-election after the incoming Liberal premier had failed to win his own seat in the general election.

But in any case columnist Don McGillivray’s metaphor of “bait in a mousetrap” in 1989 referred to a situation with the Meech Lake accord – and later with the Charlottetown accord also though to a different degree – where prime minister Mulroney tried to coerce the country into accepting an amended Constitution that would have been profoundly lacking or contained serious flaws (in its reform of the national political institutions) and yet nearly impossible to be further amended.

Back on New Year’s Day 1990, columnist Andrew Coyne of the Financial Post had offered his view that the type of constitutional veto in the Meech Lake accord was there for the political interests of Brian Mulroney and Robert Bourassa: ³¹⁰

“Quebec’s present “veto” is a construct of emotional blackmail on the part of Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa and the political interests of the Prime Minister.”

Among the 23 changes recommended by a parliamentary committee headed by Jean Charest to improve the Meech Lake accord was public hearings by the parliament and provincial legislatures in the future for constitutional reform; in November 1990 Mulroney took a bolder first step toward post-Meech Lake constitutional reform, appointing a 12-member royal commission, headed by prominent academic and journalist Keith Spicer, to hear the views of ordinary Canadians across the country on the future of Canada; Mulroney said: ³¹¹

“Every Canadian who wants to will be able to have a say.”

Reactions to the Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future from politicians and the media were mixed: some felt that by using this forum to preclude other concrete constitutional steps he had previously promised Mulroney was actually stalling the new reform; some others felt that due to Canadians’ “divergent aspirations” the forum would lead more to cacophony and anarchy than to constructive inputs on constitutional reform; Spicer viewed it as a kind of collective therapy for the country, a quest for the Canadian soul and values. ³¹²

Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells said that it would be more effective to convene a gathering of elected/appointed politicians from the federal and provincial levels – a “constitutional convention” – to focus on concrete constitutional proposals. ³¹³

Columnist Don McGillivray believed the Spicer forum was just “window dressing” by Mulroney, and predicted that once the process was over Mulroney would revert to his accustomed, behind-closed-doors discussions and negotiations for the Constitution. ³¹⁴

The forum took the form of both public hearings held across the country and telephone inputs, over a period of five months; the participation results turned out to be mixed as well: forum moderator Lloyd Brown-John had several hearings in Southern Ontario in which he sat alone in an empty room, and when a hearing at the town of Tecumseh was cancelled due to heavy snowfall it was not rescheduled; in some other instances the forum drew comments that were bigoted or racist. ³¹⁵

In the end, the Citizens’ Forum consulted about 300, 000 Canadians compared to Spicer’s original goal of one million, via public hearings, telephone lines, and mail; the Spicer commission report released in June 1991 declared that Canada was in a crisis, of identity, understanding and leadership, and of national unity; in his forward for the report, Keith Spicer stated that (despite all that about crises) the report’s consensus editing did not reflect enough the depth of people’s anger toward Mulroney and Mulroney’s role in the national unity crisis; Spicer also noted that the degree of decentralization contemplated by Mulroney was out of step with the English-Canadian (though not with the French-Canadian) values. ³¹⁶

After the report’s release, national polls indicated that two-thirds of Canadians felt it had been a waste of time, and two-thirds of Canadians also wanted Mulroney to step down. ³¹⁷

Although the forum’s discussions were often not focused on constitutional reform, some important themes did emerge early as to what Canadians would like to see in that respect: they wanted Quebec to be part of Canada, wanted to go a distance to do the right thing and fix the problem of the aboriginal people, and wanted more or less decentralization but definitely not more centralization. ³¹⁸

The commission was however taken aback by how much dissatisfaction people expressed toward the official English-French bilingualism policy (enacted by Pierre Trudeau): they called it divisive and unnecessary. ³¹⁹

Many Canadians also expressed desires for more direct democracy – fundamental changes to the political system that would include “referendums, impeachment, recall, proportional representation, free parliamentary votes, an elected or abolished Senate, direct election of the prime minister and the convening of a constituent assembly” ³²⁰ – a plethora of changes far beyond the Meech Lake accord and its process in the past, and in fact beyond the elected politicians’ visions for post-Meech Lake constitutional reform.

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

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(Go to Part 8, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 6)

(Continued from Part 5, previous blog post)

American James C. Kopp, long-time anti-abortion activist serving a life sentence since 2007 for the 1998 murder of Amherst, N.Y. abortion doctor Barnett Slepian, is a main suspect in the 1994 shooting of Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) abortion doctor Gary Romalis; a Canadian warrant for Kopp was issued for the 1995 shooting of abortion doctor Hugh Short in Ancaster, Ontario, though the prosecution has recently decided to stay the charges; Kopp is also a main suspect in the 1997 shooting of abortion doctor Jack Fainman of Winnipeg. ²²²

In the New York case, two anti-abortion activists harbouring and helping Kopp, Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi, received light penalties. ²²³

As previously discussed, the Romalis shooting incident in November 1994 turned the Canadian medical community into showing strong support for justice minister Allan Rock’s stricter gun-control legislation, which was unveiled on November 30, 1994 and included a ban on military-type weapons, one of which – an AK-47 – had been responsible for wounding Dr. Romalis.

There has been no press report of any identified suspect in the second, knife attack on Dr. Romalis in July 2000, which took place at my former medical clinic headed by my family physician Dr. James K. Lai, where Dr. Romalis practiced after retiring from the VGH.

But recently on May 31, 2009, only days after the Canadian charges were dropped against Kopp in the Dr. Short case, American abortion doctor George Tiller, who had previously been shot and wounded and who had lectured to abortion providers in Vancouver at the invitation of Dr. Romalis, was gunned down in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, becoming the first dead doctor of anti-abortion violence in the U.S. after Kopp’s killing of Dr. Slepian; the main suspect, Scott Roeder, had been a member of an extreme Christian militia group, the Freeman movement. ²²⁴

When the gun-control bill was officially put to the legislative process in February 1995, it was on St. Valentine’s Day, “known as the day of the St. Valentine’s Massacre”, noted John Perrochio, president of the Canadian Firearms Action Council, referring to a rival-gang slaughtering in 1929 Prohibition-era Chicago, in which the killers dressed as policemen, and behind which control of illegal liquor from Canada by the notorious gangster boss Al Capone was apparently a motivating factor. ^{225, 226, 227}

The Chretien Liberal government’s gun-control bill immediately won praise from U.S. president Bill Clinton, whose own 1994 legislation on banning assault weapons had been lauded in Canada by Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, in the wake of the Dr. Romalis shooting in Vancouver; in a speech to the Canadian parliament, Clinton compared Canada’s move “to outlaw automatic weapons designed for killing and not hunting”, to universal healthcare Canada had – something Clinton had also tried to introduce in the United States but failed. ²²⁸

In the same speech in February, Clinton was even more passionate appealing for Canadian national unity, citing the words of Harry Truman in 1947 praising Canadian unity and progress, but Clinton also emphasized that the political future of Canada was “entirely” for Canada to decide; the latter position was comforting enough to the opposition Bloc Quebecois leader Lucien Bouchard and his over 50 MPs in the House of Commons.

Lucien Bouchard had once been a Quebec-separatist friend of Brian Mulroney’s recruited into his government, who then split with him in 1990 near the time of the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord to give Quebec a “distinct society” status, founding the first separatist party at the federal level; in the 1993 election the party took over many of the former Mulroney Tory seats in Quebec. ²²⁹

Timing of Clinton’s appeal was significant, as a Quebec referendum on independence was being planned for the fall of 1995 by the recently elected Parti Quebecois government of premier Jacques Parizeau’s in Quebec, with support expressed by the government of France; with Bloc Quebecois designated the Official Opposition in the Canadian parliament, the Quebec sovereignty-independence movement – historically a mix of French ethnic nationalism and anti-colonial liberation ideology whose sympathizers and cheer leaders had included Charles de Gaulle of France – was reaching a new height; despite reservation expressed by prime minister Jean Chretien, Clinton during this official visit to Canada held a meeting with the leader of ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’ who was recuperating from amputation of his left leg and hip due to an 80%-fatal flesh-eating disease he had contracted on November 28, 1994 – one day after officially launching a Bloc Quebecois campaign for the referendum. ²³⁰

During that same spring of 1995, efforts by the media and by the RCMP to pursue former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s possible corruption were also expanding, following the October 1994 publication of Stevie Cameron’s book exposing Mulroney-era corruption. Cameron’s book had become not only a bestseller alongside books such as Open Secrets by Alice Munro, but a favorite Christmas gift. ²³¹

In January, the press reported that author Peter C. Newman living in a “Kitsilano tower” in Vancouver was writing a revealing book on the Mulroney era to be published in September 1995, that Newman had collected materials from Mulroney himself and persons in his circle including Frank Moores and Fred Doucet, and also obtained “proof” about certain controversial episodes involving Mulroney in the late period of the Meech Lake accord – in relation to Lucien Bouchard and to Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells whose final refusal to put it to a vote in the provincial legislature ended the accord. ²³²

Also in January, RCMP investigators Sergeant Fraser Fiegenwald and Inspector Carl Gallant visited Stevie Cameron after listening to her talking about her book on the CBC Radio program The House; they told her that in 1988 there had been a brief FBI investigation on the Airbus sale to Air Canada but that the Canadian government and police had been unwilling to cooperate; she told them in return her experience that interviewing people in Europe had been more helpful. ²³³

In March, CBC’s The Fifth Estate aired an episode on the Airbus story, alleging that Airbus Industrie paid secret commissions to Karlheinz Schreiber to smooth the 1988 sale of Airbus A320 planes to Air Canada, and that Swiss bank accounts were opened by Schreiber for Frank Moores and for an unidentified Canadian politician; part of the information aired came from Cameron’s file she had gathered for her book, and all of the materials in her file were also reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the der Spiegel magazine in Munich, Germany. ²³⁴

But while Cameron’s book continued its popularity, other media venues and the public at-large continued to ignore the Airbus issue raised in the book and now being covered by The Fifth Estate. ²³⁵ The RCMP kept existence of the criminal investigation from public knowledge until November 1995 when a September 29 letter to the Swiss authorities caused extreme reactions from Mulroney, as previously discussed, and brought the issue into high media profile.

Meanwhile, the Chretien government encountered some serious opposition within the Liberal party caucus to the gun-control legislation, especially on the national gun registry – police registration of every gun and every gun owner in Canada. ²³⁶

The size of the Liberal internal opposition was a concern for Jean Chretien: in the first vote in the House of Commons which the Liberals easily won, 3 Liberal MPs voted against the bill, 49 of the 177 majority Liberal MPs (in a parliament of around 300 MPs) were absent and as many as 30 of them stayed away to show their opposition; at a caucus meeting before the vote Chretien had warned his MPs to vote with the party, and after the vote he quickly stripped all parliamentary committee positions from the 3 Liberals Benoit Serre, Paul Steckle, and Rex Crawford who had voted no regardless – despite their claims that they represented the anti-gun-control sentiments of their rural riding constituents. ²³⁷

Chretien also planned to enforce party discipline in the same manner with the hate-crime bill protecting minority rights (including homosexual rights) that was being processed through the parliament in parallel to the gun-control bill.

Compared to the previously discussed case of Stan Wilbee in November 1992, i.e., the lone Tory MP publicly calling for a leadership review on Brian Mulroney and asked to resign his B.C. caucus chair by justice minister Kim Campbell, that Wilbee in the end not only retained the caucus chair and kept his chair at the Commons committee on health issues but also got to embark on leading a new parliamentary probe into the HIV-tainted blood-supply issue, Chretien’s measures in April 1995 seemed harsh.

Comparison to Mulroney – on lack of democracy within the party – was evident: it was acknowledged by Liberal party whip Don Boudria who had often criticized Mulroney for “muzzling independent thought” in the Tory caucus, but who now denied that the Liberal party was doing the same; ²³⁸ also, mirroring in late January 1993 when then Tory house leader Harvie Andre told the media about a minority in the Tory party and caucus wanting Mulroney to resign (as previously discussed), Bob Speller, chair of the rural Liberal caucus who had advised rural Liberal MPs inclined to vote ‘no’ to skip the first vote instead, was reported as saying the 49 Liberal MPs who had not shown up for the first vote could vote ‘no’ in the final vote: ²³⁹

“Liberal MP Bob Speller, chair of the 60-member rural Liberal caucus, says the media wrongly focused on the three MPs: Benoit Serre (Timiskaming-French River), Rex Crawford (Kent) and Paul Steckle (Huron-Bruce).

More significant, he suggested, were the 49 Liberal MPs who abstained or
deliberately avoided the Commons vote.

“A majority of these MPs will take a stronger stand at third (and final) reading if there aren’t changes,” Speller predicted in an interview. “Many of these are new MPs who got elected on the basis of being able to stand up for their constituents.

“Now people are saying the government shouldn’t be silencing MPs for representing their constituents.””

Across the aisle from among the opposition Reform party, a lone MP (and future prime minister) Stephen Harper voted for the gun-control legislation in this first vote, as did one of the only two Tory MPs, Elsie Wayne. ²⁴⁰

Like the Bloc Quebecois led by Tory-breakaway MP Lucien Bouchard taking many formerly Tory seats in Quebec, the Reform party formerly represented by only one MP Deborah Grey and led by party leader Preston Manning outside the parliament, took most of the western Canada rural ridings (particularly in Alberta) from the Tories in the 1993 election, also winning over 50 seats and just two fewer than Bloc Quebecois. ²⁴¹ On conservative issues such as against gun control, the Reform party became the Liberals’ main opposition in the House of Commons – even though Reform had championed an anti-crime platform (as mentioned before).

Since before the 1993 election polls had consistently showed that a majority of Canadians, including most Albertans, supported stricter gun control, including mandatory gun registration: nationally, support for a gun registry was 86% in September 1993, and by late May 1995 with the legislation near final vote it was still 71% and higher than support for the full bill at 64%. ²⁴²

Despite the high poll numbers supporting it, besides the Reform party and the pro-gun groups there were other public shows of opposition to the gun-control bill.

One high-profile act of opposition came from Justice Jean-Claude Angers of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal, who wrote an open letter to prime minister Jean Chretien and the MPs, calling the gun-control proposal ”serious infringements of the rights to security and enjoyment of the person and to own property”; two law professors complained about his conduct to the Canadian Judicial Council, and Angers received a public reprimand from council chair, B.C. Chief Justice Allan McEachern, about his “highly partisan attack” on a proposal that could become law which he would often need to interpret and enforce; Angers did not receive any disciplinary penalty but he had been in the process of a transfer to the lower Court of the Queen’s Bench when he publicly aired his opinion. ²⁴³

Another high-profile act of opposition, that of backtracking from supporting, curiously came from the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), which had become a strong public supporter of gun control after the shooting of Dr. Gary Romalis in November 1994: the association still stood by its support for banning military-type assault weapons, one of which had wounded Dr. Romalis, but changed its position on the gun registry – also the main point of contention for the dissident rural Liberal MPs – and questioned its effectiveness for violent-crime reduction; the reversal caught justice minister Allan Rock by surprise, but the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians continued to support the gun registry. ²⁴⁴

Within the notion of a universal gun registry a key point of contention was whether failure to register would be treated as a serious criminal offence or closer to a motor-vehicle registration violation; Allan Rock had earlier hinted at the possibility of a compromise, and after the CMA expressed to the Commons justice committee its new doubts on the gun registry, Rock suggested to the committee adding a category of lighter criminal penalties – outside of the Criminal Code – for some situations, and the committee quickly endorsed it. ²⁴⁵

In early June prior to the final Commons vote after which the gun-control bill would be sent to the Senate if passed, the Liberals were bolstered by announcement of voting for the bill from 3 Reform MPs, Ted White, Ian McClelland and Jim Silye, who made their decisions based on polling their constituents; Jim Silye’s position was especially significant because he was the Reform party whip in charge of enforcing party line on MP votes, but the Reform party allowed its MPs to vote their constituents’ wishes and though Silye was opposed to the bill his constituents at the riding of Calgary Centre favoured it. ²⁴⁶

On the other hand Stephen Harper, MP for Calgary West who had been the lone Reformer voting for it in the first vote based on a poll of 64% constituent support, now would vote no because a second polling of his constituents showed that although most still supported the gun registry, 60% of them did not like a potential 10-year jail penalty still in there for failure to register. ²⁴⁷

On June 13, the gun-control bill easily passed the Commons, with support from Bloc Quebecois; two day after, the hate-crime legislation also passed, with Bloc Quebecois support, ensuring tougher criminal penalties for crimes “motivated by hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability”. ²⁴⁸

The yes votes on gun-control from Jim Silye and the other two Reformers had been expected to compensate for the loss of votes from the 3 rural Liberal MPs who had voted no the first time, but the number of Liberal MPs casting final no vote increased to 9, and 4 other Liberal MPs voted no on the hate-crime bill; several days earlier there was also a lone Liberal no vote on the government’s budget-implementation bill, from justice committee chair Warren Allmand protesting budget cuts that reminded him of the Mulroney Tories’ cuts on spending for social programs; that came to a total of 14 Liberal MPs who openly dissented on important votes – in fact 15 had MP Rex Crawford not suffered a heart attack and missed the final gun-control vote – and a record high of vote dissent since the Chretien government began in November 1993. ²⁴⁹

After the budget vote in early June, Chretien had immediately moved to take Warren Allmand off his chair position at the justice committee, but unexpectedly Reform party whip Jim Silye refused to give his signature to expedite the removal, and also went public accusing the Chretien government of doing no better than the Mulroney government when it came to quashing internal dissent or rewarding friends with patronage. ²⁵⁰

Chretien was unfazed by the setback in demoting Warren Allmand, and unbending in demanding party loyalty. He praised the Liberal MPs who voted for the gun-control bill “against the very strong wishes of constituents who fiercely opposed the firearms law”, he declared that a vote against the government was a vote against him personally, and he told his MPs that if they did not follow the party line he might refuse to sign their nomination papers for the next election. ²⁵¹

Warren Allmand countered that back in April 1988 when 22 Liberal MPs signed a letter asking then party leader (and Chretien’s rival) John Turner to resign, they did not receive any punishment, and many of the Liberal MPs who had opposed Turner were now in Chretien’s cabinet; Allmand said Chretien was going too far in demanding loyalty. ²⁵²

So, on openly taking a position against the party leader at least Liberal MP and justice committee chair Warren Allmand faired as well in June 1995 – due to help from the opposition Reform party whip Jim Silye – as B.C. Tory MP Stan Wilbee had faired in November 1992 for reasons unpublicized (as noted previously).

A public-relations problem for prime minister Chretien in his hard-line stand on loyalty within the party caucus was that it had been his election promise in 1993 as party leader – written in the Liberals’ election Red Book – to allow more free votes by Liberal MPs following their constituents’ wishes, but that afterwards no free vote was allowed on government legislations; there were many other unfulfilled Red Book promises such as, according to Warren Allmand, protecting spending that helped disadvantaged Canadians. ²⁵³

The 13 Liberal MPs dissenting on the gun-control or hate-crime legislation had won the 1993 election in their ridings with promises of parliamentary voting to reflect the constituents’ wishes, and had been hailed as heroes at the time; it had been a Liberal Red-Book promise but now in 1995 they were condemned as “trained seals” by the party. ²⁵⁴

At this point of record-high Chretien Liberal internal dissent, John English, historian and Liberal MP for Kitchener, believed party discipline to be important to national unity for a country as diverse as Canada, but Newfoundland Liberal MP George Baker suggested that the British model should be adopted in which government MPs, like opposition MPs, were allowed to question the government during the Question Period in the Commons; in contrast, the rightwing Reform party MPs, including leader Preston Manning, were during this time practicing free votes or at least freely discussing their opinions on the issue. ²⁵⁵

Some political commentators, e.g., William Thorsell, noted that the Canadian parliamentary system vested too much power in the prime minister of a majority government, more than any other industrialized democracy did in the government leader, and that in most Canadian political party constitutions the party leader’s authority could not be easily challenged unless a full party convention was held; they also noted that democratic rights and freedoms as guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (crowning achievement of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1982 Canadian Constitution) as the only reduction of the political power of the government – and “the single most “Americanizing” event in Canadian history” according to some – merely put the power in the hands of court justices appointed by the prime minister. ²⁵⁶

In hindsight, knowing Chretien’s personal focus on bettering Mulroney in consecutive majority election wins and in the length of governing – first achieved in August 2002 before announcing retirement and then capped with a 10-year celebration in October 2003 at the Sikh Golden Temple before stepping down (as discussed previously) – one can see that it was personally important for Chretien in 1995 to quash Liberal dissent that he viewed as posing a risk to his governing and to his future election chances, that Chretien was thinking beyond a few legislations – albeit major ones – and setting his sight on making historical milestones in Canadian politics for which his MPs simply should not compare him to his Liberal leadership predecessor, former prime minister John Turner, who had never won an election.

John Turner in fact shared some of the other Liberals’ misgivings about Chretien’s intolerance of democratic debate or dissent, and he later would also start to speak about it, in October 2000 less than 3 weeks after the death of Pierre Trudeau whom both Turner and Chretien had wanted to succeed and Turner did in 1984; Turner even praised the opposition Canadian Alliance – the Reform party with a new name in 2000 – for being more democratic: ²⁵⁷

“The Alliance is debating the issues,” Mr. Turner said.

“Whether or not you agree with the result of the debate or even the scope of the debate or even the subject of the debate, they are debating the issues.

“They’re opening up the system. And I believe the system needs opening up – beginning with the democratization of Parliament.””

In October 2000 when Turner heaped the above praise on the Reform party as a subtle criticism of Chretien, Chretien had wasted no time – after the mourning was over for Pierre Trudeau who had passed away of prostate cancer – to announce that he would call an election in which his campaign would emphasize Trudeau’s legacy; although election speculations had been around before Trudeau’s death, some cynics opined that Chretien must have known for a while Trudeau had been gravely ill, and was so eager to make electoral history as to take the opportunity of Canadians’ sympathy over Trudeau’s death to get his third majority term – without other urgent issues calling a new election sooner than any majority leader in history but former Liberal prime minister Wilfred Laurier in 1911 – over the relative inexperience of the new Alliance leader Stockwell Day and the split of conservative votes between the Alliance and the Tories – the latter again led by Joe Clark. ²⁵⁸

Chretien would win his third majority handily on November 27, 2000, garnering 41% of the popular vote – highest of his 3 times. ²⁵⁹

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

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(Go to Part 7, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 5)

(Continued from Part 4, previous blog post)

At the beginning in late 1993/early 1994, the politics of targeting Brian Mulroney would have been understandably tricky to the incoming Liberal government given that Mulroney had just served for nearly nine years as a majority-government leader; however the new government soon got a change of guard at the helm of the RCMP when in February 1994 Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced the resignation of RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster to take effect in June, while justice minister Allan Rock was busy with other Liberal priorities such as banning discrimination of homosexuals. ¹⁶⁹

Appointed by Mulroney in 1987, Commissioner Inkster largely enjoyed a trouble-free seven years leading the RCMP, with a big part of the blames for controversies the RCMP was entangled in – particularly during 1988-90 over possible political biases in the Richard Grise affair (about certain timing in corruption investigation near the 1988 election time) and in the Doug Small affair (investigation into a 1989 federal budget leak) – shouldered by his second-in-command, deputy commissioner Henry Jensen. ¹⁷⁰

But within the RCMP, Inkster was perceived by some as uninterested in political investigations or even yielding to high-level political pressures: when the Airbus Affair investigation broke into the news in late 1995 it was revealed that back in 1990 when Commissioner Inkster ordered an inquiry by Ontario Judge Rene Marin into RCMP handling of a corruption investigation on Tory Senator Michel Cogger, at the time part of the initial 1989 Airbus-Mulroney investigation had been hidden under the Cogger case for fear of Mulroney government interference. ¹⁷¹

The price of Inkster’s resignation was high in early 1994: in November 1992 Mr. Inkster who had served from 1988 to 1991 as vice president for the Americas in the International Police Organization (Interpol), was elected as president of Interpol for a 4-year term – only the second Canadian to ever hold the top international police job. ¹⁷²

Imagine what kind of clout in the international law-and-order arena the new Chretien government would lose with the departure of RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster, whose Interpol appointment had been praised by the RCMP as “a great honour for Canada” and for the RCMP, even if within the RCMP there were different opinions about the Interpol: while Inspector Claude Sweeney, head of Interpol’s Canadian branch, was enthusiastic about the benefit of computerized information hook-up in the plan, others pointed to examples of concern, such as in Venezuela where Interpol was expected to help track dissidents as criminals, or former Interpol drugs committee chairman Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader indicted in 1988 in the United States on narcotics charges, or former Interpol president Jolly Bugarin, crony of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, widely accused of a cover-up in the killing of Marcos opponent Benigno Aquino in 1983. ¹⁷³

On the other hand, by early 1994 Mr. Inkster never publicly expressed support for stricter gun control (as a quick survey of the press archives would reveal) despite passion for it from the new prime minister expressed during the election campaign; Allan Rock’s first public talk of tougher gun-control law started in April 1994 two months after announcement of Inkster’s resignation, and in contrast to Inkster the new RCMP commissioner Philip Murray in June on the day before taking over the job publicly expressed strong support for a full handgun ban suggested by Allan Rock. ¹⁷⁴

It is also interesting to note that Commissioner Inkster’s intent to resign was announced in February with departure in June, much like Mr. Mulroney had done a year prior as prime minister. ¹⁷⁵

The point is that if the change of guard at the RCMP gave the Liberal gun-control drive crucial momentum, it likely also bolstered whatever Liberal plan there was to pursue Airbus Affair investigation against Mulroney.

Even more intriguing is the fact that back on November 10, 1992 when Mr. Inkster was named president of Interpol, he got the job without competition: he became the only candidate when a second nominated candidate – from China – withdrew in favour of him. ¹⁷⁶

Now that’s worth pondering: with Mr. Mulroney’s diplomatic clout among western leaders, Mr. Inkster likely had been agreed upon by them; but a Chinese government non-compete gesture at a time when the June 4, 1989 violent military crackdown on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was still fresh in people’s minds? ¹⁷⁷ That had to be the result of some deal from Mr. Mulroney.

What is personally interesting is that the day when Norman Inkster was acclaimed president of Interpol happened to be the day when I first sent written press releases to the media – especially CBC-TV in Vancouver – criticizing Mulroney’s leadership in general and his conduct in the Charlottetown constitutional process, which had recently ended with the failure of the Charlottetown accord in a national referendum (an accord and failure previously discussed in the context of the role of David Cameron, husband of Stevie Cameron, in the Diane Wilhelmy affair).

In one of the press releases on this date, November 10, 1992, I called for B.C. Tory MPs to support their caucus chair Stan Wilbee who had publicly demanded a leadership review, I stated that a cabinet restructuring proposed by Mr. Mulroney should not be the priority but rather the priority was Mulroney’s fitness as prime minister, and I demanded that constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark give a public account of the damages to national unity and to the economy inflicted by the Tory government’s constitutional misadventure. The quote below is from a copy of my old press release – disclosed to me in an October 1, 2003 RCMP personal-information disclosure: ¹⁷⁸

“Mr. Stan Wilbee, MP for Delta, B.C., has spoken out publicly, criticizing Mr. Mulroney’s leadership and requesting a province-by-province Tory leadership review. The B.C. Tory MPs should speak out now in support of Mr. Wilbee, reaffirm their confidence in him as the B.C. caucus chair, and defy Mr. Mulroney’s threats of retaliation by means of cabinet restructuring or by any other means. … the most pressing issue facing the country right now, that of Mr. Mulroney’s fitness as the prime minister. … Before taking up any new tasks, Mr. Joe Clark needs to give the people of Canada an adequate explanation for the recent Charlottetown constitutional fiasco and a satisfactory account of the full extent of damages the latest constitutional adventure of the Tory government has done to both national unity and the economy.”

History as it happened has been that Mulroney’s leadership never became an issue of debate within the ruling Progressive Conservative party, though a few short months later in February 1993 Mulroney announced his resignation to take place in June; no accounting of the party’s constitutional policy was ever done, or if it mattered, as in the coming election the party was nearly wiped out.

As it happened, I also sent a copy of this press release to BCTV (then part of the CTV network, today part of the Global TV network). In the morning of the day of the B.C. Tory caucus meeting to discuss the fate of Stan Wilbee as caucus chair (November 17, 1992 as per press archives), who had drawn up a letter of resignation to hand in for his challenge of Mulroney, ¹⁷⁹ I phoned BCTV to follow up on my press release and told a news staff member about the caucus meeting in Ottawa, who replied that BCTV would send a camera crew there; later that day when I called again (likely in the afternoon) the same staff member said the camera was there right now; but when I called back the day after I sensed disappointment on the part of this BCTV news staff member, probably because it wasn’t as I had told him that the B.C. Tory MPs might turn against Mulroney’s leadership.

Regardless, I was disappointed that BCTV did not report on the caucus meeting it had camera footage on.  Brief press reports indicated that Stan Wilbee’s resignation was rejected by the caucus and days later Dr. Wilbee, a medical doctor and chair of the House of Commons subcommittee on health issues, also launched a parliamentary investigation on the HIV-tainted blood supply issue. ^{180, 181}

No detail of what transpired in that B.C. Tory caucus meeting has ever been reported by the media, but I have pieced together a scenario of known events starting from the loss of the Charlottetown constitutional referendum on October 26, 1992 to Mr. Mulroney’s February 24, 1993 announcement of resignation, as follows.

First, heading into a Tory national caucus meeting on October 29, 1992, Stan Wilbee and Bob Horner, MP for Ontario Mississauga West, were the only Tory MPs questioning Mulroney’s future as leader in the wake of the defeat of the Charlottetown accord; but Horner was quickly silenced by the support others, particularly justice minister Kim Campbell, expressed for Mulroney during that meeting. ¹⁸²

Immediately, Kim Campbell, MP for B.C. Vancouver Centre, requested Wilbee to resign his B.C. caucus chair position for the reason that Wilbee’s view on leadership did not represent other B.C. caucus members. ¹⁸³

But then the November 17 B.C. caucus meeting rejected Wilbee’s offer to resign as caucus chair; after that, Wilbee no longer called for a leadership review and would only state that Mulroney was unpopular in Western Canada but was better than leaders of the other parties: ¹⁸⁴

"He is unpopular in the West, but once you get into an election campaign, where people start to compare leaders, I think that he comes out far and away above the rest."

Wilbee said the above on January 31, 1993 after a national caucus meeting in which all were read “the riot act” not to speculate on leadership, by Mulroney personally. ¹⁸⁵

But before that, in early January there was a cabinet shuffle and Joe Clark indeed kept his constitutional affairs job (and was given a new cabinet-committee position), and the press wondered why he was staying on a “nothing job”; Kim Campbell got the best “plums” to become defence minister and veterans affairs minister. ¹⁸⁶

Also before that on January 18, Al Horning, Tory MP for B.C. Okanagan Centre (Kelowna), who earlier had praised Mulroney (“still head and shoulders ahead of” other party leaders) in a way similar to what Wilbee now did, took over as the only Tory MP to publicly challenge Mulroney, saying Mulroney should step down and predicting so. ¹⁸⁷

The discontent was spreading in January before it was gagged by Mulroney at month’s end, as a The Vancouver Sun article, “Minority dreaming of a Blue heaven after purge-a-Tory”, quoted Tory House leader Harvie Andre as stating on January 25 that there was a minority in the party and among the MPs who wanted Mulroney to step down: ¹⁸⁸

““There is no grassroots sense that the leader must go, but they all read polls too and certain people are undoubtedly worried about whether we can win or not,” Andre said in an interview Monday.

”However, I don’t think that’s anywhere near the majority, that’s a minority at this point.”

Andre adds that given Mulroney’s unpopularity and the government’s standing in the polls, the prime minister is no doubt contemplating his future.

”Goodness knows, he’d be inhuman if he weren’t thinking about it.””

The news article reported that a dozen Tory MPs during a caucus meeting over the weekend actively called for Mulroney to make his intention clear – though apparently in early 1993 as in late 1992 only one Tory MP (in each case from B.C.) openly challenged Mulroney’s staying as leader.

His warning to Tory MPs apparently worked, Mulroney became feisty and fiery during much of February, predicting a third-term majority under his leadership, calling it “triple crown” and taunting opposition leader Jean Chretien with it in the House of Commons. ¹⁸⁹

On February 20, just one day after Mulroney said he would seek re-nomination of MP candidacy in his riding, Mulroney’s long-time leadership rival Joe Clark, a former prime minister originally from Alberta, announced he would retire by the next election but in the meantime would continue with constitutional affairs – he had been hoping to negotiate a self-government accord for the Metis people. ¹⁹⁰

On February 24, Brian Mulroney announced his intent to step down in June after a new leader was chosen.

Stan Wilbee immediately resumed his criticism, stating Mulroney “has become a lightning rod for everything that’s bad”, and, “Sometimes you have to start with a clean sheet”; as well, Kim Campbell confirmed that she had been harbouring leadership ambition while Mulroney pondered his future: ¹⁹¹

“People have approached me and my staff offering support. My position is that there wasn’t a campaign until the prime minister made a decision to retire”.

Kim Campbell turned out to be the biggest winner – and the biggest loser – of the ambiguous, non-open pressure waiting on Mulroney’s decision, as she would be crowned Mulroney’s successor (i.e., without a lot of competition) and become the first female prime minister after having been the first woman as justice minister and as defence minister ¹⁹² – a real “triple crown” – but she would also suffer the worst electoral defeat in Canadian history at the hand of the Chretien Liberals.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that Campbell would lose her own MP seat, to Liberal Dr. Hedy Fry, former president of B.C. medical association and the first woman of color to be in the cabinet; the Vancouver area also elected Raymond Chan, the first Chinese-Canadian cabinet member, and Herb Dhaliwal, later the first (Sikh) Indo-Canadian cabinet minister and the one accompanying Chretien to the Sikh Golden Temple in India to celebrate their 10-year victory anniversary. ¹⁹³

As for the issue of native self-government rights, although the incoming Liberals and the outgoing Tories each agreed with the native people on their implementation in principle, the Tories held the view that there was no constitutional guarantee given the defeat of the Charlottetown accord, whereas Jean Chretien was firm on not holding “divisive” constitutional negotiations Mulroney had liked to do (which Pierre Trudeau called “can of worms”), preferred to focus on the economy, and announced a federal government agreement with the provincial governments that the native rights were already in the existent Constitution; however this Liberal constitutional position was not acceptable to Ovide Mercredi, national chief of Assembly of First Nations. ¹⁹⁴

The lesson from the above digression into the circumstances leading up to Mulroney’s decision to step down in February 1993? Brian Mulroney is never the loser – be it your luck or your bad luck.

Also note that Mulroney’s appointment of John C.  Major of Alberta – a lawyer in the law firm Bennett Jones Verchere headed by Mulroney’s tax lawyer and financial trustee Bruce Verchere and a friend of Karlheinz Schreiber – to the Supreme Court of Canada happened on November 13, 1992, i.e., amid the tension of Stan Wilbee’s call for a leadership review, and that back in 1983 Schreiber had been involved in political maneuvers to oust Joe Clark and bring in Mulroney as Tory leader (the topic has been discussed in previous Notes, with attention to the fact that Justice Major later took early retirement on Christmas Day 2005 ahead of his turning 75 on February 20, 2006 – a date when my late father would have turned 73).

During that time, Kim Campbell’s oppressive stand against Stan Wilbee was consistent with her loyalty to Mulroney’s legacy as Tory leader.

For the core of her campaign team Campbell used many of the controversial figures who had helped Mulroney win his 1983 leadership, persons such as Frank Moores, who as discussed in previous Notes had served on the Air Canada board and whose role in the 1988 Airbus purchase had been questioned by the media, Guy Charbonneau, Tory senator and a known central figure dealing with money in Mulroney’s political circle, David Angus, another Mulroney appointee on the Air Canada board who had also provided Tory party funds for Mulroney family’s expenses exposed during the 1987 “Guccigate” publicity, and Peter White, a Conrad Black associate who had had a hand in the Richard Grise affair as Mulroney’s principal secretary in 1989 – a scandal regarding possible RCMP political bias in favour of Mulroney at the time of the 1988 election. ¹⁹⁵

Campbell was unwilling to distance herself from Mulroney despite projecting herself as wanting to change the way politics was done – even when confronted by CBC broadcasters Peter Mansbridge and Pamela Wallin at a Prime Time News interview on March 25, 1993, she refused to say why her policies would be different from Mulroney’s and strenuously defended the Mulroney government’s $5-billion CH-101 helicopter-purchase plan she had involvement in as defence minister. ¹⁹⁶

According to author Murray Dobbin, no later than in early December 1992 Kim Campbell had actually made a ‘secret’ arrangement with Mulroney to succeed him, while Canadians were in the dark about whether Mulroney would leave: ¹⁹⁷

“When Brian Mulroney met in early December 1992 with his Quebec lieutenant Marcel Masse… Mulroney asked Masse to take on the task of chaperoning Campbell around Quebec and organizing a few private dinners to introduce her to key business people, journalists, artists and other opinion makers. Masse agreed. And Campbell’s silent run for the leadership was underway.”

“… at a time when Canadians were still wondering whether Brian Mulroney would really resign, the man himself was already preparing Campbell for the crown and offering her the entire palace entourage. Masse would not only organize a series of private dinners for Campbell, but he would bring with him to Campbell’s side the entire organizing team that had helped Mulroney win the leadership of the Tory party.”

Any secretive maneuvering between Mulroney and Campbell in late 1992 should have raised suspicion that Mulroney wanted to pre-empt Joe Clark altogether – not just the prospect of a Clark comeback as leader but Mr. Clark as the ideological counterweight to him in Progressive Conservative politics – as there were serious media speculations that Clark might have a good election chance as leader should Mulroney step down. ¹⁹⁸ Subsequently, Mulroney’s announcement of pending resignation came on February 24 several days after Clark’s February 20 announcement of his intent to retire.

Despite “attractive” private-sector job offers, and turning down Mulroney’s offer for him to become Canadian ambassador to the U.S., Mr. Clark (who was still an MP) and wife Maureen McTeer soon became professors at the University of California, Berkeley – my alma mater of graduate study as previously mentioned in the context of author Chalmers Johnson – with Mr. Clark at the same political science faculty Dr. Johnson had been in and Mrs. Clark joining the public health faculty; within a few short months an election-defeated Campbell would join Clark in the academic world, going to teach at Harvard University. ¹⁹⁹

In November 1992 Stan Wilbee and Joe Clark were not the only potential victims of Kim Campbell’s ‘loyalty succession’ ambition: I myself was likely an actual victim.

The reader may notice that next to the “Nov. 10” date of the RCMP copy of my old press release quoted earlier, is a (RCMP) date stamp of “Nov 30 1992”, and within a line of fax mark at the bottom of the page – at the right-hand side slightly obscured by another (RCMP) date stamp of “Oct 21 1993” – the date of “11/30/1992” can be seen (the RCMP stamps and the line of fax-mark are on every page).

It turned out that in the morning of November 30 I had faxed several previous press releases – attached to a cover note – to the local constituency office of MP Kim Campbell in whose riding I was a resident, and in the afternoon two RCMP officers, one of whom introducing himself as Sgt. Brian Cotton, a detective from the UBC detachment, were in my city apartment to take me to UBC Hospital for a psychiatric assessment (and committal), citing something related to my prior dispute with my former employer UBC and the RCMP (a lawsuit by me had been mentioned at the start of the above-mentioned press release) as well as concern with my persistent communications with the CBC.

To the hospital, Sgt. Brian Cotton accused me of having “paranoid ideation”, and some UBC Hospital psychiatrists then determined my thinking as “delusional” and of “persecutory type”. But as everyone can read a copy of my fax received by Kim Campbell’s local MP office got into the hand of the RCMP on that same day – and not even by fax as there isn’t a second fax-mark line on this RCMP copy.

Police simply would not act this closely and quickly on a non-emergency mental-health case in apparent disregard for proper rules or conflict of interest: the officers were outside their normal jurisdiction area of UBC, the RCMP and UBC were defendants in a civil lawsuit by me over that prior dispute, and Sgt. Brian Cotton also rejected my response of going to the nearby Vancouver General Hospital for a ‘neutral’ assessment, citing pre-arrangement at UBC.

For the reader unfamiliar with the background of politics, before becoming a Tory MP Kim Campbell had been also a UBC faculty member, a lawyer at the law firm Ladner Downs, chair of the Vancouver school board, executive assistant to B.C. Premier Bill Bennett of the Social Credit party, and a Socred member of the B.C. legislature; she was originally from Port Alberni, B.C. ²⁰⁰

Within three weeks a mental-health review panel ordered my release. But in mid-January 1993 (days before Tory MP Al Horning came out saying Mulroney should step down), I was again under psychiatric committal – this time by Vancouver Police action – and again within a few weeks I was released by a review panel, in mid-February with Brian Mulroney still talking about winning a third majority.

To refer here to this part of history of personal efforts to help bring down Mr. Mulroney is not to accuse then RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster of having-forged/forging deals with the devils, but to show that the RCMP played political roles – in my personal experience in particular.

While Inkster’s resignation in 1994 was expected to give the Liberal government a fresh start in gun control at home, it also took place amid the Liberals’ retreat from its election promise of higher priority for international human rights, to focus on the economy and business; and as if that had not been enough, prime minister Chretien’s first official foreign visit – to Mexico instead of traditionally to the U.S. – in March 1994 was marred by the assassination by gunshot of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio (of the Institutional Revolutionary Party that had ruled uninterruptedly for 65 years) just before Chretien’s arrival, by a large and angry mob shouting “out” while Chretien attempted but failed to pay respect to the body of the slain, and by a rare type of rebuttal of Chretien’s notion that Mexican democracy and Canadian democracy were just different types – from Subcomandante Marcos of the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation in a jungle interview in Chiapas, Mexico. ²⁰¹

Subcomandante Marcos’s criticism of Chretien was voiced at a time when Canadian native leaders had been expressing support for more rights (including land-title rights) for the Mexican Mayans in light of swift acceptance of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the new Chretien government – an agreement that had been negotiated by the Mulroney government and had contributed to its unpopularity, and one that Chretien during the election campaign had talked about renegotiating. ²⁰²

To the Chretien Liberals who were shifting governing focus from human rights to trade, the concern from all this Mexican violence seemed to be security – in Canada there had already been similar angry crowd of unemployed construction workers in his hometown (riding) of Shawinigan shouting at Chretien and smashing a window of his constituency office – but on the other hand the security should not hinder a prime minister who took pride in being “close to the people”, according to solicitor general Herb Gray who would review the PM’s security arrangements with RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster and foreign affairs minister Andre Ouellet. ²⁰³

Such could only add momentum to the gun-control drive being launched by justice minister Allan Rock, and prime minister Chretien personally announced on the last day of a high-profile Liberal party convention in mid-May in Ottawa that he would instruct Allan Rock to proceed with stricter gun-control legislation to be introduced in parliament in the fall, after the convention unanimously endorsed a resolution on tougher gun control – sponsored by the National Women’s Liberal Commission. ²⁰⁴

Several days afterwards Chretien was at the Winnipeg convention centre attending a high-profile Liberal fundraiser, and there were not only around 200 native demonstrators outside chanting “We want jobs”, but also 29-year old Earl Kevin Jans wandering about in the convention centre and arrested for wanting to see the prime minister while carrying a pistol-like crossbow and three arrows ²⁰⁵ – proof that a handgun is not always necessary, given the precedent that with crossbow and hunting arrow Montreal student and author Colin McGregor had killed his estranged wife Patricia Allen (a Revenue Canada lawyer and daughter of retired RCMP assistant commissioner George Allen), on November 13, 1991, i.e., one year before the Stan Wilbee and John Major events near the end of the Mulroney era, and nearly two years before the Chretien era began. ²⁰⁶

Back in 1991 several weeks after Patricia Allen’s death, the Mulroney government’s weaker gun-control law that had been stimulated by the December 6, 1989 Montreal massacre – killing of 14 women at Ecole Polytechique (engineering school of the University of Montreal) by gunman Marc Lepine – passed the Senate on the eve of the massacre’s two-year anniversary (after it had passed the Commons earlier). ²⁰⁷

Fortunately for Chretien, by the fall of 1994 gun control would not be the only political issue stirring controversy with passion as Stevie Cameron’s major book exposing corruptions in the Mulroney years was scheduled for the same fall season; there were both excitement and nervousness awaiting for the upcoming fall books on Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney: ²⁰⁸

“Last year McClelland & Stewart’s big fall book was Pierre Trudeau’s own memoir, which sold more than 200,000 copies. This year it’s deja vu all over again, when M & S brings out the second volume of Trudeau And Our Times, by the Governor-General’s Award winning team of Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson. Subtitled The Heroic Delusion, it takes up the former prime minister’s career after the ‘74 election. A hot political book, awaited with trepidation by some, is On The Take: Greed And Corruption In The Mulroney Years by Stevie Cameron (Macfarlane Walter & Ross). Another book that will make Conservatives uncomfortable is The Poisoned Chalice: How The Tories Self-Destructed by David McLaughlin (Dundurn)”.

Some people were nervous also because, in Stevie Cameron’s view, with the departure of the Mulroney era’s corrupt reputation – which had been akin to Richard Nixon’s – also went the (first elected, but formerly controversial as mentioned in earlier Notes, and) reform-minded Speaker of the House of Commons John Fraser, while the return of the ‘heroically delusional’ Trudeau brought back the “secretive, institutionalized club” of Major-General Gus Cloutier – Sergeant-At-Arms of the House of Commons and an old friend of Jean Pelletier and Jean Carle now running Prime Minster Jean Chretien’s office. ²⁰⁹

In late October 1994 Stevie Cameron’s book on the Mulroney years came out and became an instant bestseller: it portrayed a damning picture of the greed, crime and corruption in the political circle associated with the Mulroney government, and of Mulroney turning a blind eye to the grease around him while living his extravagant lifestyle at the expenses of the party and the government; coming out around the anniversary of the Tories’ historic election debacle it served as a reminder how democracy could go wrong. ²¹⁰

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

Or

(Go to Part 6, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 4)

(Continued from Part 3, previous blog post)

In its history, the renowned Knox College founded in 1844-45 by the Presbyterian Church in Canada once had a prominent leading role in the free-church and anti-slavery movements in Canada.

A main founder of Knox College was Rev. Dr. Robert Burns, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of the leaders of the 1843 Free Church movement in Scotland (the “Great Disruption”), who was invited to Toronto in 1844 to start the Free Church movement in Canada, became minister of Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto and led the founding of Knox College. ¹¹⁸

The first Principal of Knox College – a position begun in the 1850s – was Rev. Dr. Michael Willis, a colleague of Burns and also from Scotland, who when became the principal was already the founding president of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. ¹¹⁹ The anti-slavery history in Canada at the time was mainly known for the “Underground Railroad” – a network of anti-slavery Americans and Canadians who smuggled black slaves from the American South to freedom and settlement in Canada. ¹²⁰

As much as being a part of the anti-slavery history, though, Knox College of Toronto is not related to (and should not be confused with) Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Located at a town that was the centre of anti-slavery activity in the state of Illinois and a “Freedom Station” on the Underground Railroad, this liberal-arts Knox College had been founded seven years earlier in 1837 by a group of anti-slavery advocates led by Presbyterian minister George Washington Gale, starting out as a bible-training college with an odd name, Knox Manual Labour College, for the reason that students worked on the farm to support their educations; this Knox College’s establishment had the approval of Abraham Lincoln among other state legislators, and subsequently it was the ‘historic’ site of the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate – one of a series of political debates in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas – for election to the U.S. Senate; Lincoln lost the election but the debates propelled him to national fame and in two years’ time election to the U.S. presidency, defeating Douglas this time. ¹²¹ Abraham Lincoln also received a honorary degree from this Knox College – his first and the college’s first honorary doctorate. ¹²²

Even now, Knox College in Illinois continues its tradition of being part of the politics for change and progress, proudly making it known to Americans: the college observes that when John Podesta, former Bill Clinton Whitehouse chief of staff and leader of the transition team for newly elected President Barack Obama – the first African-American President in U.S. history – appeared on the TV program The Colbert Report (on January 29, 2009, which happened to be a special day for me, and when I posted my first blog article, “Greeting the New Millennium – nearly a decade late”), Obama, Podesta and the show’s host Stephen Colbert all had received Knox College honorary degrees. ¹²³

But even so, back in early 1863 when Abraham Lincoln was succeeding in his historical achievement leading Americans to abolish slavery – although he had not decidedly won the Civil War – the Canadian contributions to the cause, especially those by Rev. Robert Burns and Rev. Michael Willis of Knox College in Toronto, were singled out by George Brown – a fellow Scot and founder of The Globe and Mail newspaper – for congratulation for a mission accomplished: ^{124, 125}

“… Now we have an anti-slavery president of the United States. Now we have an anti-slavery government at Washington. Now we have an anti-slavery congress at Washington. Already slavery has been abolished in the District of Columbia. At last a genuine treaty for the suppression of the slave trade has been signed at Washington with the government of Great Britain, and for the first time in her history the penalty of death has been enforced in the republic for the crime of man-stealing. Then, the black republics of Hayti and Liberia have been recognized by the United States as inde­pendent powers; and, even more important still, the vast territories of the United States have been prohibited by law from entering the republic except as free states. And the climax was reached a month ago when Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States, proclaimed that from that moment every slave in the rebel states was absolutely free, and that the republic was prepared to pay for the freedom of all the slaves in the loyal states. The freely elected government and legislature of the United States have proclaimed that not with their consent shall one slave remain within the republic.

Was I not right, then, when I said that we ought to rejoice together to-night? I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman (Rev. Dr. Willis), on the issue of your forty years’ contest here and on the other side of the Atlantic on behalf of the American slave. I congratulate the venerable mover of the first resolution (Rev. Dr. Burns), who for even a longer period has been the unflinching friend of freedom. I congratulate the tried friends of emancipation around me on the platform, and the no less zealous friends of the cause throughout the hall, whose well-remembered faces have been ever present when a word of sympathy was to be uttered for the down-trodden and oppressed. …”

Of special interest here is that George Brown who made the above-quoted speech in 1863 soon after the proclamation of emancipation by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, had also (with his father Peter Brown and with Robert Burns) founded the Presbyterian Record magazine; this fact is mentioned in the September 2005 article quoted in detail earlier (“A united effort crowns righteousness”) about Stevie Cameron and her Out-of-the-Cold program as well as about Chinese Presbyterians; in addition, George Brown as a politician later became one of the founding fathers of Canada (Fathers of the Confederation). ¹²⁶

The late Rev. Edward Ling’s son Winston Ling, vice president of finance and administration at Tyndale University College & Seminary since 1995 – as earlier mentioned – whose wife Stephanie has been a governing board member of Knox College in Toronto as well as a board member of the Scott Mission for the needy, had for many years been the executive vice president of finance at (the former) Crownx Inc., holding company of the Crown Life Insurance Company, the Extendicare Health Care group, and the Crowntek Group, working under then president Michael Burns and chairman David Hennigar from the owners: Toronto’s Burns family of Burns Fry Ltd. fame (today part of Bank of Montreal Nesbitt Burns), and the Jodrey family of Nova Scotia. ¹²⁷ I found the Burns and Burns (i.e., the financial Burns family and Rev. Robert Burns) associations in the Winston-Stephanie Ling couple quite interesting and even intriguing, and once asked Winston if the Burns family were related to Rev. Robert Burns; but the answer was: not that he knew of, Michael Burns was Anglican – in fact a recent Chancellor of (the Anglican) Renison University College at the University of Waterloo. ^{128, 129}

My question to Winston is pertinent here even if not everyone in Rev. Edward Ling’s large family is necessarily familiar with a historical Burns connection: my great-great-grandfather, namely Rev. Edward Ling’s medical-doctor-and-Presbyterian-minister grandfather (as discussed earlier in the context of a Toronto Star article about Rev. Ling, and in my January 29, 2009 blog article, “Greeting the New Millennium – nearly a decade late”), who had been born in or around 1849, the year the first Protestant church in his home region of China was founded in his humble village by Swiss Basel missionary Rev. Rudolf Lechler, in around 1860-61 became a Christian when he was a young pupil tutored by Rev. William Burns at the school of that church and was baptized by Rev. Burns ¹³⁰ – that was 100 years before the cornerstone for the first Chinese church building in Toronto, with a school-style architecture, was laid under the leadership of businessman and church elder Edward Ling in 1960, who then went to Taiwan in 1961 to study to become a pastor. ¹³¹

The Rev. William Burns in China in 1861 was the person Canadians had known as Rev. Robert Burns’s young nephew, William Chalmers Burns, who in 1844 had accompanied Robert Burns to visit Canada, where Robert Burns stayed to lead the free-church movement and found Knox College. They and William Chalmers Burns’s fellow young preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne were enthusiastic members of the Scottish Free Church movement led by Thomas Chalmers, and when visiting Canada the young W. C. Burns was already internationally known as the remarkably incredible revival preacher of Kilsyth, having drawn crowds as large as 10,000 to his spiritual-revival sermons in 1839. ¹³²

William Chalmers Burns was born in 1815 in the same year the Swiss Basel Mission was founded in Basel, Switzerland, which as a Lutheran foreign mission subsequently had strong influence over British foreign missionary work – particularly that of the Anglican Church – for the next several decades. ¹³³ In 1847, Burns became the first official foreign missionary sent abroad by the Presbyterian Church of England Foreign Missions, going to China in the same year as the two first Basel missionaries to China, Theodore Hamberg and Rudolf Lechler. ¹³⁴ In 1860-61, Rev. William Burns was invited to the Ling family’s home village in the Shantou (Swatow) region of Guangdong province to visit the first Protestant church of the region founded by Rev. Lechler in 1849, which had been left with only 13 disciples on their own in 1852 when Rev. Lechler was expelled by the regional government and returned to Hong Kong. ¹³⁵ Rev. Burns preached and taught school in the same house where Rev. Lechler had done so, and revived and took under his spiritual wing this local church. ¹³⁶

Rev. William Burns died several years later in 1868 at the age of 53, up in the unfamiliar Northeast of China (i.e., Manchuria, homeland of the imperial Qing-dynasty ethnic people), exhausted, nearly alone amongst a small group of Chinese worshipers but still full of the spirit that had set him apart. ¹³⁷

In or around 1896, the second medical hospital to be founded by the English Presbyterian Mission in the southern coastal Shantou region of China was named the William Burns Memorial Hospital in his honour; by this time, the young-pupil Ling baptized by Rev. Burns had long ago completed studies under Doctor William Gauld at the first hospital of the Mission founded by Gauld, practiced as a medical doctor in this hospital for decades and was about to become a Presbyterian preacher, while a fellow doctor Lin (Ling and Lin were actually the same family name, in a village where the majority were of this family name and distantly related) – son of the person who had invited Rev. Burns to revive the village church left there by Rev. Lechler – would become the principal of this second hospital; in recent decades the site has been the campus of a regional school of public health. ^{138, 139}

Prior to his life journey in China, William Chalmers Burns was in Canada from 1844 to 1846, preaching in churches in different part of the country. In the Woodstock area of Ontario (Oxford County) Rev. Burns baptized a baby born in 1844 – the year he arrived in Canada – by the name of George Leslie Mackay. ¹⁴⁰ Little Mackay grew up with W. C. Burns as his idol, studied at Knox College in Toronto and at other Presbyterian institutions, became the first foreign missionary sent abroad by the Presbyterian Church in Canada (and became a medical doctor), following the example of his idol to China and following his idol’s footsteps to do missionary work in the Shantou (Swatow) region; but after arrival Mackay decided to sail across the sea to take a look first at the island of Taiwan, and once he saw the Tamsui town in Taiwan he knew instantly Taiwan would be his home, where today a large Mackay Memorial Hospital (in the capital city Taipei with branches including in Tamsui Township) stand in testimonial of his contributions to his adopted homeland – even if the hospital originally was not named for him but after a Captain Mackay of Detroit whose wife donated money for his clinic on the condition that the hospital be named that way. ¹⁴¹

Rev. Dr. Mackay died at the age of 57 in 1901 in Taiwan, after a fruitful and fulfilled life, whose achievements beside the medical hospital included founding around 60 churches with thousands of coverts, founding the Oxford College – forerunner of Taiwan Theological College and Seminary where  in the 1960s Rev. Edward Ling studied to become a preacher – and serving as the elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1895; the Canadian missionary assisting him in his later years and then succeeding him was one Rev. William Gauld (apparently unrelated to the British Dr. William Gauld in the 1860s in Shantou across the sea). ^{142, 143}

Burns, Mackay, Mackay & (not closely or necessarily related) Mackay, William Gauld & (unrelated) William Gauld, Burns & (unrelated) Burns, what interesting ‘inspirations’ around!

The town of Tamsui in Taiwan which Mackay felt in love with at first sight and chose as home was by the Chinese name 淡水, meaning ‘freshwater’; it had been an important seaport on international trade routes, with prior Spanish and Dutch colonization and missionary work dating back to the San Domingo Fort and church in 1629, and has been referred to as “Venice of Taiwan”. ¹⁴⁴ In contrast, the village housing the first Protestant church in the mainland region of Shantou across the sea – a region Mackay had gone to as inspired by W. C. Burns – was a small fishing village named Yanzao (Yam-tsau), or 鹽灶, meaning ‘salt pan’, where Rev. Lechler had stayed only three years before he was expelled in 1852; in fact, even the port city of Shantou not long before that point had been a fishing village in the same county. ¹⁴⁵

An English missionary book published not long after Rev. William Burns’s visit to the Yam-tsau church in 1861, told of the story of local children flocking to him and singing his Christian hymns during the Chinese New Year, at the same time when a clan-feud with a neighbouring village were engaging two hundred militia men in the defense of this village (and obviously most of the attention); and to travel to that village the missionaries had to contend with robbers on the road. ¹⁴⁶

A moving tale indeed. Even today the Yanzao village is known in China for a unique type of annual ritual – held on the twenty-first and twenty-second days of the Chinese new year – in which an idol of Chinese god is paraded in palanquin under heavy protection and the large crowd fight to drag him down to the ground, something – just like any other ritual of idolatry type – most local Christians do not take part in and the older Christians do not go anywhere near. ¹⁴⁷

The purpose, or morale, of the preceding, long-winded family history digression in this blog article about Brian Mulroney, the Airbus Affair and Stevie Cameron, is the illustration that in the proud history of Canadian Presbyterians there was a long period from 1843-44 to the end of the 19^th century when, inspired by Scottish Presbyterians, the Church was split into two, the Established Church and the Free Church, with the former then overseen by and beholden to the government and the landownership, while the latter independent and democratic in its religious affairs, governing, and finance: ¹⁴⁸ in this historical division, the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Toronto where Stevie Cameron has been an elder and founded the Out-of-the-Cold program, was the centre of the Established Church in Canada, from which the Free Church led by Rev. James Harris, broke off, founded Knox Presbyterian Church as its new centre, ¹⁴⁹ brought over Rev. Robert Burns and Rev. Michael Willis (among others) from the Scottish Free Church, founded Knox College, and became active also in anti-slavery activity.

The Chinese Presbyterians in Toronto have been associated with the Free Church tradition, and with the heritage of William Chalmers Burns from Scotland and in China. They have also been associated with the early heritage of Swiss Basel missionaries in China, who made efforts to separate missionary work from the state of being tainted by unscrupulousness under German missionary Karl Gutzlaff – who had taken part in the opium trade himself and in the Opium War as a British colonial official – and to expose some of the problems in Gutzlaff’s organization Chinese Christian Union. ¹⁵⁰

It was a moving history, even if it wasn’t quite that of Knox (Manual Labor) College in Illinois with its association with Abraham Lincoln; and this history provides a new level of context to certain criticism of Stevie Cameron related to her Presbyterian background, “inbred puritanism of the old Ottawa establishment”. However such if true of Ms. Cameron was not what many Canadian Presbyterians have been; besides, one should note that Ms. Cameron’s personal choice (who grew up in Belleville outside of Toronto, studied at UBC in Vancouver and worked for the federal government in Ottawa before becoming a journalist in Toronto ¹⁵¹) did lead to the opening of the once-privileged St. Andrew’s door to even the homeless, and that as a journalist-author her pursue to expose corruptions associated with Brian Mulroney has been relentless, albeit – with the Gutzlaff controversy in mind – not as hard-hitting or as all-encompassing as the work of academic-author Chalmers Johnson on recent American history – which has been noted in an earlier part of this blog article.

The legacy of Brian Mulroney, in his known propensity to associate with persons of corrupt or unsavoury repute and in the yet-unclear depth of his political problems of ethics and conduct relating to business interests close to or lobbying his government, may in the end be compared to some of the more notorious in the recent history of the western, Judeo-Christian, democratic world. Yet, as have been previously shown, neither the RCMP nor the Liberal government of Jean Chretien during its 10-year tenure from 1993 to 2003 really went after Mr. Mulroney: in public they were merely reacting to, and maintaining a continuing interest in, issues in the Airbus Affair as brought forward by members of a left-leaning Canadian media – particularly by Stevie Cameron and the CBC’s The Fifth Estate – and supported by those in the federal government system opposed to Mr. Mulroney’s rightwing agendas.

The conclusion would again appear to be that not only there was no political vendetta against Mulroney on the part of the RCMP or the Liberal government, which he has alleged, but that the long-running saga was mostly a media circus despite that – as previously shown – very serious and nagging questions still exist as to the nature of the Airbus Affair, the depth of corruption and Mr. Mulroney’s real role in them.

However I am not ready to conclude such but would next illustrate that the Chretien government and the RCMP did likely have their own agendas in seeing the criminal investigation against Mulroney be launched and be ongoing for an extended period of time (from 1995 to 2003), and that although neither wanted to get to the bottom of the Airbus Affair both had an interest to see it hound Mr. Mulroney through to the end of the Chretien political era.

In November 1997 in his first media interview after winning a legal settlement with the federal government over the libel issue, Mr. Mulroney alleged that there had been pressure from Liberal justice minister Allan Rock to prosecute him since 1993: ¹⁵²

"Allan Rock arrives (in Ottawa) in 1993. The first thing he does as minister of justice is to write to the RCMP, conveying gossip about me personally to the commissioner of the RCMP requesting an investigation. Out comes (Stevie) Cameron’s book (On The Take), Herb Gray, the solicitor general, gives a copy of it to the commissioner of the RCMP, asking that he look into it. These are clear signals by a new government to a national police force, and the signals say, it’s all right for open season on Mulroney”.

And Mulroney further stated the Liberal government must have been behind the RCMP in branding him a criminal in a letter to the Swiss authorities:

"If anyone believes that this could take place without the knowledge of the minister of justice or the knowledge of the solicitor general or the knowledge and approval of the commissioner of the RCMP or the knowledge of the PMO [i.e., Prime Minister’s Office] anybody who believes that, I wish them well in Disney World".

While the Chretien government at the time denied any involvement in the RCMP investigation, I would give Mr. Mulroney the benefit of the doubt on his points quoted above. My analysis of press archives has suggested to me that such were likely the case, however that it was not obvious vendetta against Mulroney but a part of the incoming Liberal government’s law-and-order agendas during 1993-1995 to include a criminal investigation of Mulroney’s role in the Airbus Affair, and that the Liberal brand of law-and-order may at least partially explain the criminally accusatory language in the September 29, 1995 letter to the Swiss authorities.

First, one notes that when Jean Chretien stepped down as prime minister in December 2003, he had completed a decade-long reign in which he won three back-to-back majorities – among the most Canadian prime ministers have done in history – in elections in 1993, 1997 and 2000, ¹⁵³ and that big anniversaries and personal milestones in politics were important for the high-achieving Chretien, who in August 2002 when announcing his plan to step down after his was challenged by long-time leadership rival Paul Martin, set a time of February 2004 – well past the ten-year mark in power – for retirement. ¹⁵⁴

On the date of the 10-year anniversary of his election to power, Saturday, October 26, 2003, Chretien celebrated by visiting the sacred Sikh Golden Temple in India on a day that happened to be Diwali – India’s equivalent of Christmas, basking in happiness among over 100,000 revellers and accompanied by natural resources minister Herb Dhaliwal, one of several Sikh Canadian Liberal MPs, while in Ottawa in the House of Commons a motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois was to be voted on that Tuesday to force Chretien to step down as soon as Paul Martin became the Liberal leader in November; but Mr. Chretien was still planning to attend the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria in December, and he survived the motion, notifying new leader Paul Martin on November 18 that he would leave office on December 12 after returning from Africa – an unusually long time for a new Liberal leader to wait (for anything more than 10 days). ¹⁵⁵

The British Commonwealth summit turned out to be important as during that early-December event Zimbabwe under leader Robert Mugabe withdrew from the Commonwealth due to continued opposition from western democratic nations against ending suspension of its membership – in place after Mugabe was accused of rigging election in 2002. ¹⁵⁶ A Canada-EU summit after that, originally scheduled for December 17 in Ottawa (which would be right after Chretien’s resignation), was mysteriously cancelled by then EU president, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who also refused to meet with Chretien sooner in Europe, so Chretien paid a farewell visit to France with his large family accompanying him, and then as his last official foreign-relations function he received Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Ottawa on December 11. ¹⁵⁷

Now, taking notice of Mr. Chretien’s liking of anniversary dates and milestones, one recognizes that on April 22, 2003 when the RCMP announced termination of the Airbus Affair criminal investigation, the day happened to be the 10-year anniversary of the Liberal Party’s unveiling of its law-and-order platform for the 1993 election, an election that would turn out to be historic as the Tories under Mulroney’s successor Kim Campbell would be reduced to only two seats and without official-party status – the worst federal electoral defeat in Canadian history. ¹⁵⁸

 

(Read Full Article with Footnotes in Feng Gao’s Space) . . .

Or

(Go to Part 5, next blog post)

The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 2, previous blog post)

Whether or not author Stevie Cameron was a “conspiracy theorist” in her crusade against corruptions associated with former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s government, the second type of criticisms of her as mentioned earlier – namely about a possible personal grudge by her toward Mr. Mulroney whose rise to power in 1984 ended her husband’s promising career as a federal government official in Ottawa – may have provided an angle for a unique glimpse into something that likely was more than personal but serious opposition to Mr. Mulroney’s agendas and policies – opposition that no doubt has been a constituent of support for Ms. Cameron, cheering her investigative journalistic crusade.

As pointed out in an earlier part of this blog article and the Notes, in the early 1980s Ms. Cameron’s husband David Cameron was a federal official handling constitutional and federal-provincial relation issues in the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and as such he played a role in Mr. Trudeau’s enactment of the first Canadian Constitution in 1982; he was apparently let go when the Mulroney government came to power.

Ms. Stevie (Dahl) Cameron apparently had married (in the mid-1960s) an exceptionally able intellectual and civil servant – regardless of how he would have faired within the Mulroney government – for very soon after he had been let go David Cameron became the vice president of institutional and governmental relations at Canada’s leading university, the University of Toronto. ⁷⁷

Then in 1987 only several months after Stevie Cameron’s series of newspaper articles had become famous about Mr. Mulroney’s 50 pairs of Gucci shoes as well as other lifestyle trappings of the Mulroney family, David Cameron was appointed deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs in the Liberal provincial government of then Ontario premier David Peterson. ⁷⁸

Further along, in early 1989 when Stevie Cameron’s first book, Ottawa inside out: power, prestige and scandal in the nation’s capital, was to be published in the fall and “most insiders” were expecting it to become a bestseller, David Cameron was appointed special adviser to Ontario Premier Peterson on constitutional reform as well as Ontario’s senior representative to the province of Quebec. ⁷⁹

Previously I have pointed out that the left-leaning Canadian media and the large Canadian federal government system were two major sources of opposition to the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney in his early years as prime minister, 1984-1988. Here, the career moves of David Cameron, formerly an underling of Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, during this period of time showcased exactly that, namely the embrace of David Cameron by the left-leaning Canadian intelligentsia right after he was let go by the incoming Mulroney government, and then further embraces of him by the Liberal-controlled government of Canada’s largest and most powerful province in which the national capital is also located – as his wife’s high-profile anti-Mulroney journalistic crusade was picking up steam in stages.

To better understand that the differences between the Trudeau Liberals and the Mulroney Conservatives were fundamental, one needs to take into account that Mr. Mulroney brought in not only the policies of economic privatization and free trade to dismantle the core of the Trudeau government’s socialist, government control-centered economic and social doctrines, ⁸⁰ but also a set of agendas of decentralization and regionalization of government power, which included aligning with some of the Quebec sovereigntists-separatists (such as Lucien Bouchard, Mulroney’s old friend from his law school days), that were aimed at radically changing the orientation and the scope of the Canadian Constitution which the staunchly federalist Mr. Trudeau had brought in not long before without the agreement of the French-speaking province of Quebec; Mr. Trudeau would become dead set against these agendas during the entire Mulroney era. ^{81, 82}

Thus, from 1987 to 1990 as a key Ontario official-adviser on intergovernmental and constitutional affairs under then Liberal premier David Peterson, David Cameron was in an important position during the period of the Meech Lake constitutional reform, sitting across the table from representatives of the Mulroney Conservative federal government; ⁸³ this the general public knew less than they knew about the newspaper articles and a book from Stevie Cameron outing the Mulroney lifestyles and chronicling Mulroney government scandals.

After the Meech Lake constitutional accord ultimately failed in 1990, Mr. Mulroney proceeded to give former Prime Minister Joe Clark a leading role on constitutional affairs within his government and bring on the Charlottetown constitutional reform, and Mr. Clark brought the aboriginal people of Canada into the constitutional process. ⁸⁴ At this time, the even more leftwing, recently elected Ontario government of New Democrat premier Bob Rae turned to David Cameron once more who had returned from his posting in Quebec and was acting in his former job of deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, again naming Cameron the special constitutional adviser to the premier. ⁸⁵

That David Cameron played a key role for Ontario in the 1992 Charlottetown constitutional reform, has been recorded in a rather controversial way – at the centre of the Diane Wilhelmy affair in September-October 1992 about a taped phone conversation between Diane Wilhelmy, then Quebec deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, and an unnamed official (later identified as Andre Tremblay, constitutional adviser to Premier Bourassa); the tape recorded the other official using very nasty language to say things about three Ontarians, one of them David Cameron; the Ontarians were blamed for ‘ripping off’ Quebec in the constitutional negotiations in which Premier Bourassa did not perform well under pressure: ⁸⁶

“XX: We’re walking on our knees, as you know, eh? I think mine are full of holes … We were aggressed, badgered, fatigued. In other words, there were an awful lot of those types of problems. It’s tough to take, psychologically having all these people against you. And they’re all against us. And those Ontarians, they’re the worst sons of bitches you can imagine. Worse than that. It’s terrible.

DW: That’s what we were saying last year. It hasn’t gotten any better, eh?

XX: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. They are truly, to use a bad word … and Jeff Rose is a perfect one. Bornstein is double-faced, triple-faced. And David Cameron: there’s a guy who’s profoundly hypocritical. And who tells us things that are unbelievable …

DW: Phew, what madness. But when I saw yesterday on television that it was starting all over again. And that they were even going back on the Supreme Court and immigration. Then I said to myself, it’s a national disgrace. We should leave. Mr. Bourassa should take the plane right away and come back here. What a humiliation to arrive at that point.”

Such were how key constitutional officials-negotiators under then Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, whom Brian Mulroney had personally taken pains – bypassing participants in the constitutional negotiations from the other regions – to persuade to join in the negotiations, ⁸⁷ talked about David Cameron (and the other Ontarians) in 1992.

In comparison, the raps Stevie Cameron got in 1998 from media baron Conrad Black, discussed earlier, were more civil, barring what might be considered a veiled threat of jail from Black.

During the Charlottetown constitutional negotiations in 1992 Premier Bourassa was “fatigued” and did not do well, partly due to the long hours and the intensity of the negotiations and partly because shortly after the Meech Lake accord he had undergone treatments for a serious form of skin cancer, which Brian Mulroney personally noted during his public campaign for the Charlottetown accord’s passage in the upcoming October 26, 1992 national referendum, and which would be discovered already spreading shortly after the Charlottetown accord failed in the referendum; Bourassa would ultimately died of it on October 2, 1996. ⁸⁸

Premier Bourassa himself at the time of the Wilhelmy affair acknowledged that the affair, involving national publicity on negative opinions from the Quebec government’s top two constitutional experts, ⁸⁹ swayed public opinion in his province against the Charlottetown constitutional accord he had helped negotiate. ⁹⁰ In the end, the Wilhelmy affair became one of the major factors contributing to the accord’s defeat in Quebec in the October 26, 1992 referendum held across Canada. ⁹¹

If one wonders whether Brian Mulroney was mindful, then and later, of how some Quebecers loathed David Cameron’s role in the 1992 Charlottetown constitutional process, and of the fact that Cameron’s wife Stevie Cameron was a journalist-author writing about corruptions in his government, one can take note of the following fact which seems to have been overlooked: Mulroney not only publicly acknowledged during the October 1992 referendum campaign for the Charlottetown accord that the prospect of its passing was hurt by the Wilhelmy affair, but when the Airbus Affair became the top news story in November 1995 partly thanks to publicity from Stevie Cameron’s second bestselling book, On the take: crime, corruption and greed in the Mulroney years, Mulroney would choose lawyer Gerald Tremblay of the law firm McCarthy Tetrault as his lead lawyer for the $50 million defamation lawsuit against the RCMP and the Canadian government – the same lawyer previously representing Diane Wilhelmy in September 1992 trying to get a court injunction to prevent the phone conversation tape (and its transcript) from being aired by the media in Quebec (a partial transcript quoted above had been published in Ontario). ⁹²

Just like her background in the intelligence field being helpful to her in investigative journalism, for author Stevie Cameron her husband David Cameron and his background likely have been a crucial source of strength of support for her, with his experience and knowledge of federal politics and the federal government system, and his connections especially to those with profound disagreements with Brian Mulroney in their outlooks for Canada.

Stevie Cameron knew as much as anyone how difficult and dangerous anti-corruption campaign could be to the campaigner. It has been mentioned in the Notes of an earlier part of this blog article that just when her second book, On the take: crime, corruption and greed in the Mulroney years, was to become public one of her daughters was threatened and a number of offices of her publishers and typesetting company were vandalized.

By looking at whom Ms. Cameron has dedicated each of her books to, her stated fears seemed to have manifested there as well: her 1989 book on Ottawa politics and business lobbying was dedicated to her husband David Cameron and their daughters Tassie and Amy, her 1994 book on corruptions in the former Mulroney government and Mulroney circles was dedicated to David Cameron, her 1998 book on former Mulroney tax lawyer and financial trustee Bruce Verchere and his ultimate suicide was dedicated to her mother, Eleanor Roblin Bone Dahl, who had passed away in 1997 (a sad episode about the timing of Eleanor Dahl’s passing has been discussed in the Notes of an earlier part of this blog article), and her 2001 book on Karlheinz Schreiber was again dedicated to David and Tassie and Amy. One can understand that losing her own mother probably made Ms Cameron feel sorry for Bruce Verchere, but omitting her daughters’ names in the one book about Mulroney government corruptions – out of the three books where her husband’s name received mention?

Some persons had already died in mysterious circumstances after they had become entangled in the web of the former Mulroney government’s money, according to Cameron’s 1994 book, On the take: crime, corruption and greed in the Mulroney years: besides what have been mentioned in this blog article about the story of Bruce Verchere (and his suicide), there had been other mysterious deaths of Tory associates of Brian Mulroney’s (that had also been ruled as suicides but were disputed), namely the deaths of John Grant and Roger Nantel who in different capacities had been in charge of dispensing federal government money. (In the Notes of the earlier parts of this blog article I have also mentioned the premature deaths of Frank Moores and Gary Ouellet, noting that my own father passed away in 2005 exactly one month after Moores.)

As mentioned in some of the earlier Notes, I myself was once in peaceful political activity, in late 1992 in Vancouver, attempting to publicly air criticisms of then prime minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership in general and especially his conduct during the Charlottetown constitutional process, sending press releases to some media outlets. At the time, I was quite critical of certain aspects of the final version of the accord reached under Brian Mulroney but was upbeat about the preliminary version reached by Joe Clark after extensive national consultations; I was also critical of certain ways in which Mr. Mulroney had handled the constitutional reforms. But my efforts at airing criticisms brought nothing but personal misery.

A better example of the consequences of anti-corruption crusade, one Cameron as a journalist also wrote about extensively, is the personal experiences of Glen Kealey, an Ottawa-area businessman who had had a dispute with some of the Mulroney associates during the early years of the Mulroney government – regarding an alleged 5%-kickback request from Mulroney cabinet minister Roch LaSalle especially – and subsequently embarked on a campaign to publicize, and to criminally prosecute corruptions in the Mulroney government: he became financially broke and penniless. ⁹³

Glen Kealey not only lost all his business and money, but after years of hard campaign – including daily protests outside the national parliament lasting through the end of the Mulroney era – achieved only meager results: only one person out of 13 Tory politicians and 3 senior RCMP officers Kealey had wanted to prosecute, namely the former Mulroney cabinet minister Roch LaSalle, was charged by the Ontario Provincial Police (but not by RCMP); the OPP then missed the deadline for proceeding with the criminal charges – interestingly around the time in September 1992 when transcript of the Wilhelmy affair phone-conversation first went public (in Ontario without Quebec court approval) – and eventually dropped the charges and the investigation altogether in 1994. ⁹⁴

In one of her first newspaper articles reporting on the Glen Kealey story, Cameron even quoted what was written on Kealey’s protest placard outside the House of Commons in the capital: ⁹⁵

“RCMP always get their man – but not their politicians”.

It would be naive to believe that having a husband in David Cameron has not made her life easier and her challenging endeavour more possible for Stevie Cameron.

If, as we have seen, that the criticisms of author Stevie Cameron about her adventurousness in investigative journalism and about possible influence of her marriage on her professional work, when examined carefully, actually served to highlight the seriousness of some of the context and backgrounds to her anti-Mulroney-corruption crusade, then the criticisms about the cultural peculiarity of her religious background (Presbyterian) could threaten to turn her into a ‘saint’ of the society in the eyes of the poor, and justify her crusade in a way that a “sycophant” label on her alone cannot achieve.

Or at least that has been how a ‘progressive’ sector in the Catholic Church in Canada want others to see Stevie Cameron as, i.e., a saint for the poor; they have been hailing her as “street-side saviour of Canada’s destitute”, not so much for her anti-corruption journalistic crusade but for her work helping the poor since 1990-91 when she co-founded the “Out-of-the-Cold” program as an elder at the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in downtown Toronto, personally doing gourmet cooking for the homeless on a regular basis (at a time when she already had a solid journalistic reputation that included her 1987 Mulroney-lifestyles articles, her 1989 book on Ottawa politics and her hosting of the CBC’s The Fifth Estate), as well as for her work on behalf of missing prostitutes in Vancouver Downtown Eastside when in 1999 while at the helm of the Elm Street magazine she and writer Daniel Wood publicized the story of the missing prostitutes, which according to this progressive Catholic view “sparked public interest and a subsequent police investigation”, eventually leading to the prosecution of Robert William Pickton. ⁹⁶

The word ‘progressive’ emphasizes that accolade of such a saintly proportion accorded Stevie Cameron was not exactly universal but very much from a leftwing, educated, and feminism-friendly part of the society, and very much to do with her willingness to break with certain societal stereotypes. As the founding editor-in-chief of the Elm Street magazine, a women’s publication more about fashion and lifestyles than about crime, catering to educated and affluent female readers and with a good nationwide circulation, ⁹⁷ Ms. Cameron was willing to devote a considerable number of high-profile pages to the story of Vancouver missing prostitutes, with the written story commissioned from Vancouver writer Daniel Wood appearing in November 1999; but hers was not the first major story in the general media about the missing prostitutes since there had been press reports as early as April 1999 on attentions to the problem from then B.C. attorney general Ujjal Dosanjh and Vancouver mayor Philip Owen, and in July of that year there was American TV coverage of the issue – by the popular show America’s Most Wanted. ⁹⁸

But at where Stevie Cameron was, i.e., in November 1999 at the helm of Elm Street magazine, her story was like a feast. And then the magazine went under within a few short years. ⁹⁹

This is not to suggest that Stevie Cameron’s willingness or propensity to get into crime stories and now into about those near the bottom of the society, had to do with the demise in 2004 of a 7-year-old magazine that otherwise was competing with established, glossy and sexy Canadian magazines the likes of Saturday Night, and Chatelaine. For this it should be noted that one year later in 2005 the 118-year-old Saturday Night magazine, Canada’s oldest magazine and owned by the same publisher of Elm Street (Multi-Vision Publishing, by then part of St. Joseph Media) but previously owned by media baron Conrad Black, also ceased publication. ¹⁰⁰

However it is more interesting to note that the Catholic newspaper that had in 2003 hailed Cameron as “street-side saviour of Canada’s destitute”, Catholic New Times, also folded, in 2006 two years after Elm Street, with its last issue dated November 26 – coincidentally exactly one year from the last issue of Saturday Night: this independent Catholic newspaper had been around since 1976, with a long history of dissent on Church doctrines going back to under founding editor Sister Mary Jo Leddy, and its liberal stands on many issues such as female priesthood, abortion and same-sex marriage irritated the Church greatly. ¹⁰¹ The newspaper became openly critical of Pope John Paul II toward and at the end of his papacy in 2005, and provided a forum for, among others, openly-gay dissenter James Loney, a Christian peace activist and former Canadian hostage in Iraq; ^{102, 103} but most importantly, the readership of Catholic New Times declined substantially over the years, not the least to do with recent boycott by local Catholic parishes in Ontario. ¹⁰⁴

Being revered by a progressive sector of the Catholic Church could mean more controversy for author Stevie Cameron, and so for the interest of readers of this blog article criticisms of her regarding influence of her Presbyterian background are here viewed in the limited context as they were expressed (and cited in an earlier part of this blog article).

One can guess that a “self-righteous self-flatterer” and someone of “Victorian sensitivity” and “inbred puritanism of the old Ottawa establishment”, probably meant that although righteous and progressive the person was deeply affected by certain more conservative roots; I However find it difficult to interpret the meaning of the description, “a Presbyterian spinster’s detailed account of an orgy in the choir loft”, as I have no experience with what type of a ‘double standard’ it might be, and as apparently Stevie Cameron has been happily married to David Cameron since the 1960s.

There indeed had been conservative influence in Stevie Cameron’s family background, and she has been open about it: a great-great-grandfather, a grandfather and an uncle of hers had been Tory politicians, and in the 1970s she once campaigned for Tory candidate Duff Roblin (a name which I suspect could be related to her mother, Eleanor Roblin Bone Dahl) in Peterborough, Ontario. ¹⁰⁵ But that background had not prevented Cameron from developing her passion for anti-corruption investigative journalism focused on the former Mulroney Conservative government.

With or without praises from some on the Catholic Church side, the Out-of-the-Cold program started by Cameron at the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Toronto has been very widely praised and has been an inspiration for people from other walks of life, including professional chefs, lawyers and healthcare professionals, to participate in or start various charity programs helping the homeless. ¹⁰⁶

Perhaps it’s best to take a look at how the Presbytery of Eastern Toronto has described the Out-of-the-Cold program founded by Stevie Cameron at St. Andrew’s Church in this presbytery – in a September 2005 article titled, “A united effort crowns righteousness”, written by staff writer Amy MacLachlan of the Presbyterian Record. ¹⁰⁷

Its opening passage is about the area of the presbytery:

“As one of the church’s largest and richest presbyteries, East Toronto occupies an interesting spot on the landscape. Even though it was only created in 1949 (when the Presbytery of Toronto was divided into east and west), its history includes some of the oldest churches of the denomination in Canada. …”

Obviously this had to be a rich church where Ms. Cameron has been, or it could not afford serving gourmet food to the homeless.

 

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The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1, previous blog post)

If I have painted a picture of the RCMP and the former Chretien Liberal government reacting rather than leading in the Airbus Affair investigation into possible corruption of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, then who have been the driving forces behind the events that have dogged and irked Mr. Mulroney for so long and may still reignite?

When the Mulroney conservatives ascended to power in 1984 on a platform of economic privatization and free trade with the United States, and were perceived as practising politics more closely identified with that of the rightwing Mr. Ronald Reagan in the United States and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, the connections between the conservatives’ politics and their business and personal lifestyles naturally became subjects of scrutiny by the traditionally left-leaning Canadian media. ³⁷ Since that early days the press media have regularly exposed facts as well as innuendos, while the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Fifth Estate TV program has relentlessly pursued some of the harder topics. ³⁸

Mulroney’s approach to politics in the end proved extremely unpopular with most Canadians. The Progressive Conservative Party he had led for ten years, 1983-1993, nine of which as prime minister with two consecutive terms of parliamentary majority, a party once led by the founding prime minister of Canada Sir John A. MacDonald, in the October 25, 1993 election under his successor, the first female Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell, won only two parliament seats. ³⁹

Oppositions to Mulroney’s politics from the sprawling federal government system and its affiliates came even sooner, as in the 1988 election his party’s candidates were already wiped out from the national capital Ottawa and its surrounding urban areas in Eastern Ontario, keeping only one parliament seat in a rural riding; such sentiments were apparently not merely partisanship as his government had been rocked by a never-ending string of scandals resulting in the firing or resignation of eight cabinet ministers in a short time-span from 1985 to 1988. ⁴⁰

Given this background of history it is obvious that it was politically appealing in 1995 for the Justice Department to take a hard line when it was approached by the RCMP to initiate cooperation with the Swiss authorities in the Airbus Affair investigation; as for the real story of how the Justice Department letter dated September 29, 1995 and signed by senior counsel Kimberly Prost – another woman – came to include the reference “criminal activities carried out by the former prime minister”, it has never been adequately explained, i.e., who was, or were, behind the criminally accusatory language that would result in a $50 million defamation lawsuit from Mr. Mulroney and over $2 million of legal-settlement costs by the government. ⁴¹

In 1996 during his civil litigation with the RCMP and the Canadian government over the Airbus Affair, Mr. Mulroney’s side expressed the view that there was a vendetta against him in the Canadian media that contributed to the RCMP criminal investigation, and his lawyers subpoenaed three top Canadian journalists to testify to find out their roles in it, who were: author and former The Fifth Estate host Stevie Cameron, The Globe and Mail newspaper columnist Susan Delacourt, and Maclean’s magazine writer Mary Janigan; all happened to be women (in addition to the three female journalists, Mulroney’s lawyers also subpoenaed the executive assistant of then justice minister Allan Rock by the name of Cyrus Reporter). ⁴²

It is known that before the controversial letter to the Swiss authorities the RCMP had sent two investigators to Switzerland to interview Karlheinz Schreiber’s former accountant Georgio Pelossi, apparently oblivious to a requirement in the Swiss law for prior approval by the Swiss authorities; a Canadian judge later also ruled that Canadian judicial approval in advance was needed, which the RCMP had not obtained before requesting foreign authorities to search bank accounts (of Karlheinz Schreiber’s in Switzerland). ⁴³

It is also known that media materials provided to the RCMP had been crucial in the agency’s 1995 decision to revive the Airbus Affair investigation, and that author and journalist Stevie Cameron has been generally viewed as a key person in a tireless media campaign driving the investigation, not only through her articles, books and public speaking but also her communications with the RCMP, cooperating with the RCMP since 1988 and was later officially designated a “confidential informant” by the agency. ^{44, 45} Cameron however has been unwilling to be treated or viewed as in cooperation with the law enforcement – the RCMP in particular – out of safety concern for her family as well as concern about some of the ways in which the RCMP have operated. ⁴⁶

Not a surprise at all for Stevie Cameron to be casted as someone driving behind the RCMP Airbus-Affair criminal investigation, as she has been a leading Canadian journalist of anti-political-corruption repute ever since the early years of the Mulroney era. From a family of some background in the intelligence field, Stevie Cameron had apparently worked for a short time at the Communications Security Establishment – a Canadian intelligence agency she discussed at length in her 1989 book Ottawa inside out: power, prestige and scandal in the nation’s capital – before becoming a food and lifestyles journalist; ⁴⁷ by the mid-1980s, Cameron had begun to take on assignments investigating political ethics and conduct, and she made her initial fame in this field through reporting on the lifestyles and related problems of the family of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in 1987 exposing the so-called Gucci-gate, i.e., Prime Minister Mulroney’s closet built to house 50 pairs of Gucci shoes, 30 suits and other personal furnishings. ⁴⁸

More intriguing among what Cameron reported in 1987 than the fact that the Progressive Conservative Party helped pay for part the Mulroney lifestyles, was that during those early years there were already prospects of a legal dispute with a legitimate businessperson who did services for the Mulroney family for their lifestyles, who was threatening to take the family and the government to court for money owned; but he was given career-ending threat not to pester Mr. Mulroney who being the national leader was powerful and influential. ⁴⁹

The Gucci-gate and related topics of lavish personal spending (of government and party money) by then Prime Minister Mulroney and his family became a hot topic before the 1988 election, pounded upon by opposition parties and journalists alike. One of the journalists who expressed outrageous opinions at the time was Canadian columnist Barbara Amiel based in Ottawa and in London, England, who commented with considerable disdain: ⁵⁰

“The problem with the Mulroneys, who are certainly bright enough to know this, is that they are still a little too lower-middle class, culturally speaking, to be able to accommodate their hungry social ambitions to this reality.”

Ms. Amiel even made a bold prediction that the many Gucci shoes would end Mr. Mulroney’s political career:

“It is an understandable failing but a failing that will bring them down. The ludicrous thing about Canada is that it is not the dreadful politics of Brian Mulroney nor his lack of principle in foreign and domestic policy that will be his undoing, but one pair of Gucci loafers too many.”

Well, Canadians all know that Mr. Mulroney was a tough leader who could not be so easily brought down by one pair of Gucci shoes too many, not in 1988 anyway, and apparently thus far has never personally lost in a general election or in the court of law.

Rather, and quite ironically, recently in 2007-08 it has been by this time Ms. Barbara Amiel’s dear husband of intellectual and trans-Atlantic fames, Canadian and international press baron Lord Conrad Black of Crossharbour, who was brought down for having – together with his associates – tens of millions of dollars too many in a way that constituted criminal fraud and not just lifestyle excess. ⁵¹

The Conrad Black case is an instance of ‘Chicago corruption’, which has been discussed in my January 29, 2009 blog article, “Greeting the New Millennium – nearly a decade late”, and which included the ongoing case of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich who is represented by the same Chicago lawyer Edward Genson who defended Conrad Black. The standard views on the Black case are different, however, and they included opinions that Black’s was a case of American justice for a Canadian crime, as well as opposite opinions that Black was harshly targeted because he was non-American. ^{52, 53}

In any case, Ms. Barbara Amiel is fortunate that Lord Black’s high lifestyle with her as Lady Black, personally more extravagant than the lifestyle of the family of former prime minister Mulroney while in office, hasn’t contributed further misery to the life of Mr. Conrad Black in prison. ⁵⁴

Moving on from her 1987 lifestyle stories on then prime minister Brian Mulroney and his family, journalist Stevie Cameron hosted the flagship broadcast program of Canadian investigative journalism, The Fifth Estate, in 1990-1991. ⁵⁵

After the 1987 Mulroney-lifestyle stories Cameron also began to concentrate on a career as a book writer, specializing in investigative political journalism, and she has been growing her reputation ever since in this field, through a series of bestselling or award-winning books on subjects centred at corruptions in the era of the former Mulroney government, starting with, Ottawa inside out: power, prestige and scandal in the nation’s capital (1989; an introduction to political life and business lobbying in Ottawa, with a focus on the years of Mulroney’s first term in government, 1984-1988), then after the Mulroney era had ended, On the take: crime, corruption and greed in the Mulroney years (1994; a book credited with bringing to public attention the Airbus Affair and contributing to the revival of the RCMP criminal investigation), then after the government’s 1997 legal settlement with Mulroney on his defamation lawsuit, Blue trust: the author, the lawyer, his wife, and her money (1998; the real-life stories of Montreal tax lawyer Bruce Verchere, whose father had been a British Columbia supreme court justice, and who was entrusted with supervising Brian Mulroney’s personal business affairs while Mulroney was prime minister, stories about Verchere’s manner of business, his Swiss and Vatican bank connections, his marital infidelities and dispute with his wife who was a successful computer-software businesswoman, and his ultimate suicide in August 1993 – only two months after his appointment as chairman of Atomic Energy Canada Limited by Mr. Mulroney the day before Mulroney was to step down as prime minister), and finally, The last amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the anatomy of a scandal (2001; a book co-authored with then CBC The Fifth Estate producer Harvey Cashore, describing various international business and political-bribery activities of German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber). ⁵⁶

The last in the above series of books from author Stevie Cameron has been proven very credible by Karlheinz Schreiber’s own disclosures and revelations of facts in the last few years. Ms. Cameron’s reputation as a courageous and solid investigative journalist doggedly on the money trails of former prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber has been firmly established.

Ms. Cameron herself is also sure that the persons she has been chasing view her in this way as well, as she has been quoted as saying on November 13, 2007: ⁵⁷

“Would I be at the top of Mulroney’s list of journalists? You bet. In a letter Schreiber wrote to Mulroney on Jan. 29 this year, he said, ‘All my personal problems began with Stevie Cameron’s book On The Take and Allan Rock’s political witch hunt with the RCMP against you.’”

For Stevie Cameron, the story of Bruce Verchere, former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s tax lawyer, has continued to be a subject of intense interest, as Ms. Cameron posted a blog article about him as recently as on February 26, 2008; in her blog article, Cameron made it clear that when Mulroney was the Prime Minister he had a “lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland” (something Mr. Mulroney’s spokesman denied when Karlheinz Schreiber first said it in 2006-07, as mentioned in an earlier part of this blog article), and that as explained the day before on February 25, 2008 by Mr. Schreiber in front of the parliamentary ethics committee this lawyer was Mulroney’s tax lawyer Bruce Verchere, who was also his financial trustee while he was serving as prime minister. ⁵⁸

The reason for then prime minister Brian Mulroney’s Canadian lawyer to be referred to as his lawyer in Switzerland is that Bruce Verchere was also the Canadian lawyer representing the Swiss bank where (in a branch in Zurich, Switzerland) Mr. Schreiber opened bank accounts for Airbus commissions and other funds including his now famous $300,000 given to Mulroney in 1993-94. ^{59, 60, 61}

While her books have been either bestselling or award-winning (receiving book-of-the-year accolades), Author Stevie Cameron’s relentless pursue of possible corruption on the part of former prime minister Brian Mulroney in the Airbus Affair has also drawn her criticisms, ridicules and even verbal attacks.

One major category of criticisms levelled at Cameron has been that she collected all kinds of information she could get, including innuendos, rumors and gossips, and presented them as facts against Mulroney, and that she was a “conspiracy theorist”, “gratuitous” or even “mean-spirited” targeting Mulroney; varying degrees of this view have been expressed by many of her critics, notably author William Kaplan, columnist Philip Mathias of the National Post/Financial Post newspapers and Tory Senator Marjorie LeBreton. ⁶²

National Post columnist Gerald Owen went as far as comparing Cameron (and the American prosecutors in the Conrad Black case) to “ancient sycophants” bent on persecuting the rich and powerful out of envy more than out of justice. ⁶³

A second type of criticisms of Stevie Cameron has implied that she had a personal (i.e., family) grudge against Brian Mulroney because when Mulroney became prime minister in 1984 it ended the career of her husband David Cameron as a federal government official in Ottawa, “an assistant under-secretary of state” (i.e., assistant deputy minister) specializing in constitutional and federal-provincial relation issues. ^{64, 65}

Another category of criticisms of Cameron has touched on her Presbyterian background, hinting that she was a “self-righteous self-flatterer”, and yet in another view was of “Victorian sensitivity” and “inbred puritanism of the old Ottawa establishment” – and that some of her writing sounded like “a Presbyterian spinster’s detailed account of an orgy in the choir loft”. ⁶⁶

A most interesting, rather lengthily outspoken and contemptuous attack on Stevie Cameron has come directly from Conrad Black, who was owner of the National Post newspaper in 1998 when he penned a review of William Kaplan’s book, Presumed Guilty: Brian Mulroney, the Airbus Affair, and the Government of Canada. Mr. Black referred to the RCMP Airbus Affair criminal investigation as “a disgraceful abuse of police and ministerial powers”, stated that Stevie Cameron’s “pathological hatred of Mulroney was notorious”, and described certain controversy about Cameron to do with leaked RCMP information – which the government had used as reason for settling Mulroney’s libel lawsuit – as that Cameron “febrilely promoted” the RCMP criminal investigation and then “double-crossed” the investigator Staff Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald as well as the RCMP legal defence for the lawsuit because she was not willing to “identify her source under oath or alternately face contempt charges” in court: ⁶⁷

“Because she didn’t wish to have to identify her source under oath or alternately face contempt charges, she destroyed the feeble defence the government had against the man she had obsessively assaulted journalistically for years and she ratted on her police informant. Eventually, impartial history will have to record that for Brian Mulroney to have had such enemies was a badge of honor.

Justice was ultimately done, in that Mulroney was vindicated but most of the wrongdoers went unpunished. Only the RCMP sergeant paid with his job, doublecrossed by Ms. Cameron, the beneficiary of his misconduct, retiring the day before his disciplinary hearing, (with a full pension).”

Black also unabashedly declared that his notion of media ownership had much to do with power struggles directly related to the issue of how former prime minister Brian Mulroney should be treated by the media:

“The smugness of the public and the venality of much of the press are more worrisome. They are closely related. The publisher of the Toronto Star, the ne plus ultra of Canadian soft-left hypocrisy, unselfconsciously announced that he had "got away with" luridly partisan reporting of the case. Among the least distinguished journalistic performances were some of the Southam newspapers, especially the Ottawa Citizen (except for Greg Weston) and the Montreal Gazette. They are now under new management, for which this reviewer has some authority to speak. When tested next on such a fundamental question of justice, we will do better.”

Such barely veiled warnings from the powerful press baron Conrad Black prompted newspaper columnist John MacLachlan Gray to comment unambiguously that Black wanted to have Stevie Cameron “put in jail” and turn Canadian journalists into “toy soldiers”. ⁶⁸ Also in reaction to Conrad Black’s comments, The former RCMP Airbus Affair investigator Fraser Fiegenwald sent a letter to Stevie Cameron issuing a denial that he had been betrayed by Cameron in anyway. ⁶⁹

 

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The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 1)

(Formerly titled: The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation against former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and some community undercurrents against the RCMP)

The long awaited, long-overdue Canadian government inquiry into the Airbus Affair involving former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, and millions of dollars in commissions rumored to have included kickbacks to Mr. Mulroney personally from a 1988 sale of European Airbus planes to Air Canada – a hot topic of Canadian federal politics for well over a decade, ^{1, 2} – is finally getting started at the end of this March 2009. How exciting it is for the Canadian political scene.

Or is it?

Not really. A Canadian government public inquiry headed by Justice Jeffrey J. Oliphant of Manitoba is indeed underway in its preliminary stage and the first phase of the inquiry into the facts will begin in late March in Ottawa. ³ But this inquiry is not about the Airbus Affair, only into allegations made by Mr. Schreiber in a civil lawsuit against Mulroney and during hearings held by the Canadian parliamentary Ethics Committee, in 2007-08, that he had a business service agreement in 1993 with Mr. Mulroney while the latter was still the prime minister, that he then in accordance gave Mr. Mulroney three cash payments totalling $300,000 during 1993-94 shortly after the latter had stepped down, and that Mr. Mulroney subsequently did nothing, or very little, to justify the payments. ⁴ Mr. Mulroney however stated during the Ethics Committee hearings that he got into some sort of business consulting arrangement with Mr. Schreiber only after he had left the prime minister position, that he has fully done his part in the agreement despite receiving only $225,000 (rather than the promised $300,000) from Mr. Schreiber, and that there is no need for a public inquiry. ⁵

How boring it is to do something there no need, or only insignificant need for – even Justice Oliphant makes more than the money in question for his honourable work on the matter.

In fact, there might not have been any inquiry scheduled on any question about the ethics and conduct of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, at all, despite the kind of things that have dogged him since shortly after he became national leader and continued through when he was leaving office in 1993 and making decision to accept money from businessman Karlheinz Schreiber. ^{6, 7, 8} Represented by renowned Toronto criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan, Mr. Schreiber has been under increasing pressure since after he became a criminally accused fraudster in Germany in 1999 (a far cry from the earlier days when he was once a district court judge in Munich) related to a corruption scandal dogging former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as well as to the Airbus Affair, facing deportation by Canadian authorities; but initially he continued to deny having any role in the Airbus Affair (or having given any money to Mulroney). ^{9, 10} Schreiber however began to realize that Mulroney was publicly turning negative toward him just as his political-connection fortune started declining – demonstrated in a CBC interview with Mulroney spokesman Luc Lavoie in October 1999 when Lavoie called Schreiber “the biggest f..king liar the world has ever seen” – and he decided to file a lawsuit to get $300,000 “compensatory damages” from Mulroney; that led to a media report in late 2000/early 2001 about Schreiber having paid Mulroney $300,000, and finally to November 2003 when Schreiber talked to one of the leading experts on the Airbus Affair, author William Kaplan, nonetheless emphasizing that the money was not part of any Airbus commission. ¹¹ The breaking of silence by Mr. Schreiber came about seven months after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who had spent years investigating Mulroney’s role in the Airbus Affair, had announced in April 2003 that the Airbus Affair criminal investigation against Mulroney was terminated without finding evidence for a criminal proceeding against Mulroney. ¹²

Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber then became more and more indignant as his lost one after another legal battle to avoid extradition to Germany where he is to face criminal charges; he made appeals to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he was adamant that he is not going back there without being given the opportunity to account how he was ‘ripped off’ $300,000 by the (former) Canadian prime minister he has been dealing with in his second homeland since the early 1970s, and he talked about “public trust”, “clean up” and “fundamental justice” versus “abuse of power”, “criminal activity” and “totalitarian Governments”. ¹³

But it would not be an easy demand for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for whom Mr. Mulroney has been some sort of a patron since 2003-04 when Mulroney encouraged a merger between Harper’s up-and-coming but largely western Canada-based Canadian Alliance and his old, practically unelectable Progressive Conservative Party; ¹⁴ and in any case Prime Minister Harper’s staff did not even forward Schreiber’s letters to the prime minister: by the time Mr. Harper learned about Schreiber’s allegation of Mulroney taking $300,000 from Schreiber but doing no work (the first time sometime in early November 2007 according to the prime minister’s spokeswoman Sandra Buckler), the Canadian House of Commons Ethics Committee was already planning to fulfill Mr. Schreiber’s wish. ¹⁵

Prime Minister Harper then turned to an academic, Dr. David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo, to advise him what to do while the parliamentary ethics committee hearings featuring Schreiber, Mulroney, Mulroney’s long-time aide Fred Doucet and others were under way; Dr. Johnston reported back that there should be a limited public inquiry based on Karlheinz Schreiber’s allegations about Brian Mulroney, but that there is no necessity to include the Airbus Affair in the scope of the public inquiry because the RCMP had spent years conducing a criminal investigation into that, found “insufficient evidence” and closed its file; Dr. Johnston referred to the Airbus Affair as “this well-tilled ground”. ¹⁶

A bit of Mr. Harper’s favor for Mr. Mulroney, and a lot of ‘RCMP’s done that’, no wonder the Oliphant inquiry will be so limited in what it examines, i.e., without the Airbus Affair.

But wait. It turns out the Oliphant inquiry could still be more than only about the $300,000 or $225,000 in dispute between the two gentlemen, Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney. The Terms of Reference of the inquiry, as decided by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the recommendations of Dr. David Johnston, say to examine the “business and financial dealings between Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney”, and that what those dealings were is within the matters the Oliphant Commission will determine. ¹⁷

Well, Airbus kickbacks to Mr. Mulroney, from Mr. Schreiber directly for some job by Mr. Mulroney in the Prime Minister’s chair? Mr. Mulroney couldn’t be that dumb, could he? ^{18, 19, 20, 21}

And so more of a bore it will be if others do not hear more surprises from Mr. Karlheinz Schreiber during these upcoming hearings of the Oliphant Commission.

Some people may raise objections to my above-expressed opinion right away, that maybe even the RCMP have beaten a ‘dead horse’ to death too many times, that there was indeed nothing there. For instance, when the RCMP in April 2003 announced termination of its Airbus Affair investigation, then Progressive Conservative MP, justice critic and leadership contender Peter Mackay, son of former Mulroney government’s solicitor general Elmer Mackay who has been a personal friend of Karlheinz Schreiber, commented, “It’s a sad comment that it took the RCMP this long to come to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to proceed”, and declared, “I see it as a total, unqualified vindication of Mr. Mulroney and his complete innocence in this entire affair”. ^{22, 23} Earlier, in August 1999 over two-and-a-half years after the Canadian government had settled a civil lawsuit with Mulroney, Mr. Mulroney’s spokesman Luc Lavoie made the accusation that there was a “political vendetta” behind the continuing RCMP criminal investigation (probably seeing that the investigation was going to continue well into the New Millennium). ²⁴

An obvious counter-argument to the views dismissing any questionable role on the part of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in the 1988 Airbus deal or in the Airbus Affair, is that Karlheinz Schreiber himself used to be as righteous in his claim of not having had anything to do with the Airbus deal or any business dealing with Mr. Mulroney, and now in the past few years Mr. Schreiber not only stated openly that he had received millions of dollars of commissions from the Airbus company much of which he distributed to persons in Canada and that he had given Mr. Mulroney $300,000 (which was separate from the Airbus money), but also has become the greatest ‘crusader’ against Mulroney’s alleged abuse of public trust.

For instance, in an 1995 interview with Harvey Cashore of The Fifth Estate TV-program of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – recalled by the CBC in October 1999 when its efforts to uncover the facts still did not receive cooperation from Schreiber – Mr. Schreiber said: ²⁵

“I have told you already, whether you believe it or not: I played no role at all. I played no role at all on the Airbus”.

And yet by early November 2007 when he was trying hard to avoid extradition to Germany, railing against “abuse of power” by Mr. Mulroney earlier when the latter was prime minister, Mr. Schreiber took an extra legal step to try to expose Mulroney’s role in the Airbus Affair, a role that was connected to the company Government Consultants International, an Ottawa lobbying firm during the Mulroney era founded by Frank Moores, Mr. Mulroney’s appointee to the Air Canada board, according to a report in The Globe and Mail newspaper: ²⁶

“An adviser to former prime minister Brian Mulroney asked Karlheinz Schreiber to transfer funds, made in connection with Air Canada’s 1988 purchase of Airbus airplanes, to Mr. Mulroney’s lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland, according to an affidavit sworn by Mr. Schreiber and filed Thursday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

The affidavit states that Mr. Schreiber informed Mr. Mulroney during a meeting at Zurich’s Hotel Savoy on Feb. 2, 1998 that one of Mr. Mulroney’s closest friends and advisers, Fred Doucet, had asked him to transfer funds "related to the Airbus deal" from the lobby firm, Government Consultants International, or GCI, to Mr. Mulroney’s Swiss lawyer.”

Such new and shocking revelation would make one wonder what else important Mr. Schreiber may have yet to disclose (even if in the case of the above accusation Mr. Mulroney’s spokesman denied it, stating that Mr. Mulroney never had a lawyer in Geneva, Switzerland). ²⁷

 

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